songbirds and sacrilege (and the sugar of your smile)

by katakeleo

Summary:

Venti’s kisses, he thinks, could wage the wars he quiets with his melodies. Each touch leaves him sympathizing with the fields he’s seen ravaged by natural disasters. How could he ever come back from such devastation?
Why, then, does he always crave more?

For a soldier, the difference between love and violence is unclear. All Xiao knows is Venti.

Chapter 1

When his master gives the order, Xiao’s hands curl even tighter around his spear, as if it could save him.

His palms still slip on the handle, the hard buds of calluses having not yet formed. All things considered, Xiao is an inexperienced killer. But looking into his master’s eyes, gleaming and flintlike, he understands that violence, at least, gives you an option. It lets you refuse to bow to another’s whims.

“I can’t,” he whispers. “I don’t want to.”

The tremulo of his breath cascades between them. His master remains silent.

“I don’t want to,” he says, louder. “They didn’t do anything.”

“Sometimes it is not about what they do, Xiao, it’s about what they don’t. My temples have remained unadorned for many years now. They forget what power I hold.”

Xiao’s stomach turns. If he could collect his words, he would say that the never-ending blizzard and the famine has made it difficult for the villagers to compile satisfactory offerings. He would point out that his master truly needs no sacrifice from these people, as every day the wealthier settlements by the sea have been lighting incense and butchering goats for blessings as they prepare for war.

He would plead for his own absolution. Spilling blood is one thing, but—

“If you do not consume their dreams,” his master continues, voice pleasant, “you will consume nothing else.”

In the end, the choice is out of his hands. As always.

He lasts several months. The pit in his stomach yawns and he wishes it would swallow him whole. On what would certainly be his last day alive, emaciated and delirious, he breaks out of his restraints.

Those first dreams are the sweetest things he has ever tasted, sugar and sap mixing with the salt of his weeping. In the aftermath, looking upon the village he ravaged in his craze, saccharine still coating his throat, his master touches him with gentleness for the first time.

You wanted this, Xiao, his master whispers, running a thumb along his jaw to catch his tears. Doesn’t it feel good to take what you want?

---

Xiao generally does not choose to remember the first time he met Venti. Instead, the memory of it haunts him, and he simply succumbs to its pull.

Sometimes he feels it as he sharpens the blade of his polearm, the scrape of metal against whetstone a steady rhythm in his hands. He pictures black blood dripping off the edge and sizzling into the tiles of the roof on which he is perched. He remembers how after that battle the soles of his sandals slipped as he walked around the bodies, rain and bodily fluids mixing into puddles on the earth.

Sometimes, when he is passing through Liyue Harbor and hears the opera troupe giving their evening show, he remembers a voice like a lonely wind, the final movement of a sonata of screams. His second addiction—not only that voice, but also the person behind it.

And sometimes, the memory drags him under when Venti is kissing him, like right now.

Kissing a god is always overwhelming, even when it’s Zhongli pressing his lips to the top of his head (it happened only once, after the archon had found Xiao a husk of himself in Minlin, having just seen a rambling, mad Bosacius for the last time). He has to shy away from the feeling—like each particle of his being is slowly shaking apart until he settles into a neat pile of alchemical dust.

But when Venti lightly grabs Xiao’s chin, it feels like a fate worse than discombobulation. One scrape of Venti’s fingernails along his jaw sends him floating into the distant stars above. Every time Venti leans in, the twinkle in his eyes the last thing Xiao sees before they collide, the world turns as incorporeal as the breeze—nothing else seems substantial, seems real , other than Venti’s mouth on his. All his senses have condensed down into the sour tang of alcohol and the cloying sweetness that imbues Venti’s most flirtatious songs. His knees are going numb where they dig into the soil, the golden bed of fallen leaves doing nothing to soften the stance, but Xiao doesn’t care if it means he can straddle Venti like this, getting an up-close view of how the archon’s pupils dilate with pleasure.

And the few times that Xiao tries to pull away, unable to bear the static electricity of Venti’s proximity any longer, Venti tugs him back with a playful hand on his collar, hardly using any force at all, and Xiao helplessly falls back into the feeling again. Venti’s kisses, he thinks, could wage the wars he quiets with his melodies. Each touch leaves him sympathizing with the fields he’s seen ravaged by natural disasters. How could he ever come back from such devastation?

Why, then, does he always crave more?

Thus does Xiao seek out his own destruction, over and over again. He has been called, demanded, enslaved for longer than he can keep track of, but there is nothing stronger than the image of Venti’s lips red and swollen and slicing into an unforgiving grin. Gonna come back for more, Xiao? Gonna ask for it politely?

I might give you another if you pray to me, Xiao.

Xiao can almost believe he’s more than a creature, and that feeling is—like everything Venti takes pleasure in—intoxicating.

It only makes it all the more painful when Venti pulls away. He braces one hand against the twisting tree they were tangled under, dusting off his shorts as he stands, and Xiao can only helplessly watch where he’s sprawled on the ground, like a marionette that’s been cut loose of its strings. Something cold is settling in his stomach, as it always does when Venti decides he has had enough of Xiao for the time being. With the glow of the sunset haloing Venti’s hair, Xiao swears it hurts to look at him. 

“You’re always so good to me, darling. Tell Zhongli hello for me?”

You wanted this, Xiao. Blood and screams and lilting song.

He is left alone to pick up the pieces.

Xiao does not pretend to know the way archons or other beings of power think. Each one he knows has differed in how they wield their influence—his first master, of course, with inexplicable violence. Zhongli, with seemingly infinite wisdom and resolve.

Venti’s brand of ruthlessness may have a much more pleasant aftertaste, but it is ruthlessness all the same.

But Xiao has gotten more used to it now, at least, compared to the first time they collided together like wayward planets. He knows how to pretend nonchalance, dust off the grass-stained evidence of their tryst—because that’s what it is. Or that’s how cheap it feels when he teleports back to the inn after dark, like a lover sneaking back from a rendezvous under the watchful eye of the moon.

He knows that Yanxiao usually has a plate of almond tofu chilling in the icebox under the produce shelves, which he retrieves. He knows the stairs creak horribly and if he doesn’t want to wake up Verr Goldet, snoozing at her desk, he must teleport again to the roof. He knows that when he settles into his perch on the shingles and takes a bite of the tofu, he must concentrate on not thinking.

After all, thinking after seeing Venti makes everything so much worse. If Xiao dwells on the all-encompassing elation of their time together, he will inevitably begin yearning for the archon again—because if Venti, god of freedom and dandelion fluff and everything that blows away in the next breeze, looks at him and finds something worth coming back for, then Xiao can truly start to believe it.

For all that Venti wrecked him, the archon took mercy. He granted blessings. He plucked pleasure out of Xiao like he drew reedy notes from a leaf: song where one would least expect it. When they finished, Xiao felt unmade and reborn, what the pious might call a revelation. He never felt like he deserved to touch a god, but—

Your hands weren’t made for spilling blood, little bird. They were made for worship.

Sing for me again?

His ears burn in the cool night air as he recalls the sheer indulgence —trembling at the sound of his name being called in that dulcet tone; his hands fisted around the cloth of his pants, aching to hold on to the archon’s shoulders. Positively, stupidly human with desire, but…

For a moment, free.

Over the course of the past year, since Liyue began the slow process of learning to self-govern, Xiao has become a “regular” to the Wangshu Inn staff, to the long-time residents, to the fishermen who try their luck in the ponds surrounding the inn. Not a monster. Not a hero , either, but they would not understand why desire sounds the same as death to him. They do not remember the horrors he once wished into existence, lives lost simply due to lack of restraint. They consider him… banal.

There are worse ways to be known, Xiao thinks, as he surveys the plains from where he’s perched on the roof. This quiet boredom, where he spends hours mapping out constellations onto the night sky, or watching moonlight dance on the surface of the water… this, too, has become precious to him.

He should not want more. Sometimes he curses Venti for having ever taught him anything else. That was how Venti first framed it, after all—innocent lessons on how to relax, loosen up a little, so that maybe even his karmic ties might slacken. Xiao had doubted the effectiveness of these lessons. In fact, he’d doubted their necessity at all. His self-control had already long deteriorated, which was precisely why his binds were strung so tight.

But he’d jumped at the offer. Had agreed without even fully understanding why he felt a primal urge to simply see Venti’s smile widen in response. And after that… well, he was a child of Liyue, and contracts had to be honored. He never questioned why Venti had even made this offer in the first place—what stake the archon of Mondstadt had in seeing Xiao not succumb to his karmic debt.

Perhaps more bafflingly, he never questioned why the lessons seemed to be helping.

It wasn’t that the ties had dissipated, nor did the agony burn any less on his more painful days. He would still occasionally retreat into the single room the inn reserved for him, his limbs locking, feeling every grind of his bones against each other. In brief moments of respite, he could only gasp for air, taste the breeze floating through the open window, before the tightening started again. After those days, his teeth would ache from how strongly he’d bit down his pain.

But it seemed Venti always knew exactly when to call him. In the aftermath, the days or weeks after, Xiao waited for song, for the melody that would signal everything being made right again. After a few more months of this cycle, the pain almost seemed to take on meaning. Maybe this was the reason for beings of power—to make brutality have sense, so that you almost expected it. Needed it.

You wanted this. The almond tofu that sits on his tongue melts, and melts, and melts.

---

“I don’t want or need many things.”

Lumine grunts as she rips violetgrass from the side of Mt. Tianheng with one hand, hanging onto a shoe-sized ledge with the other. Xiao sits on the top of the mountain, legs crossed, and does not dare insult her by offering to help.

“And I don’t know what kind of satisfaction people get from sending others to retrieve the things they need.” Another rip. “It’s more satisfying when you do it yourself. Less chance that something gets screwed up, too.”

“For someone who lauds self-sufficiency, I have yet to see you decline a commission. Does it get tiring, doing their dirty work?”

“Well, unfortunately, food is one of the few needs I do have, so the income helps.” Rip. “But… I also tend to be people’s last resort. As annoying as it gets when some commissioners turn out shallow or corrupt or simply lazy… some of them have been down on their luck. Sometimes they’ve been treated unfairly, subject to powers beyond their control.” Rip. “Their behavior is something I can’t control. But sometimes it feels like there’s a reason that I’m this powerful, that I landed on this world. That I’ve touched so many lives in my time here. Like some cosmic scale that I’m balancing.”

Digging one foot into a groove in the cliffside, Lumine heaves herself up on one arm, clambering to the outcrop where Xiao is perched. After she seals away the collected violetgrass into her seemingly-infinite knapsack, she shoots him a glance. “Why’d you ask? Something that you need from me, now?”

Xiao purses his lips. He can’t very well say, I have felt nothing but shame my entire existence for being a tool at others’ dispense, and if I continue having no agency of my own I fear I will simply succumb to madness like everyone I’ve ever loved, regardless of whether the puppeteer pulling my strings is benevolent. Or even beautiful.

So he settles on asking: “Do you ever feel like you’re half a being?”

For half an instant, the traveler’s face crumples in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. She smoothes her features so quickly Xiao thinks he imagined it.

“All the time since I’ve landed here.”

“And it’s always just as painful.”

“I’m afraid so.”

They sit in silence for a while. From the other side of the mountain, they can hear Paimon’s humming as she floats, doing her part to collect the violetgrass Lumine needs.

“But I also feel like I’ve grown around it,” Lumine continues. “Nothing can fill the fundamental emptiness I feel, but there are friends who love this half-formed being I am anyway.

“You have those kinds of friends too, you know,” she counsels, peering at him from the corner of her eye. Xiao refuses to meet her gaze. “You need to know that.”

He wants to believe her. She might be one of the first among that number—the first he trusted enough to give up the details of his past willingly, instead of having it gutted out of him, like a fish with a hook in its belly. For archons’ sake, he glides down the mountain with her, making small talk and putting up with Paimon’s commentary, instead of teleporting directly to the plains. That itself must signal nothing other than true friendship.

This time, after she teleports away and that familiar emptiness returns, Xiao takes her words to heart and thinks about other places where he is wanted. No, dozens of people want him and his help, every day—he thinks about where he is welcome .

He finds himself in Liyue Harbor, at Ganyu’s door.

To her credit, she only starts slightly when she finds him standing silently outside. He kneels to help her pick up the forms she has dropped, what look like grant applications for small businesses, and patiently dismisses her apologies.

“You’re lucky you found me, I was just going to run these back to the office—left them at home,” she explains, “but of course you can walk with me! Please, I don’t mean to be rude—I just have so much to do…”

They walk in relative silence. Ganyu still fidgets like she did when they first started training together, but she slows her normally-frantic walking pace to give them more time to speak. Something in Xiao’s heart clenches at the gesture.

“Cloud Retainer sends her regards,” Ganyu says. “She won’t admit it, but she’s determined to get you to like another dish besides almond tofu. I’ve tried to tell her to stop bothering you, but she just got so excited about the bamboo soup recipe she perfected that I didn’t have the heart.”

“I’ll stop by soon then.”

“Oh, Xiao, you mustn’t indulge her like that,” Ganyu murmurs, but she sounds relieved nonetheless.

They reach the Liyue Qixing office, and though Ganyu looks sorry to cut their conversation short, Xiao knows better than to force the mental distress of taking time off upon her. He examines her—the bags under her eyes which, although dark, have been looking lighter these days; her insistence on getting her work done “before sundown, I really can’t stay,” when he’s known her to work through the night. He asks without really asking, “You’ve been making friends, then.”

Ganyu stiffens. Caught. “Oh—well—”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like Cloud Retainer. I just noticed you seem… different.”

“No! It’s alright. You’re right. I’m. Meeting Keqing after work? We’re just going to the opera.”

“That’s good, Ganyu,” he says. “I’m glad you’ve found common ground with her.”

“Thanks,” she says. Xiao observes that the blush painting her cheeks matches the rosy petals of the silk flowers blooming around the harbor. “I should really get going. But it was good seeing you, Xiao. Tell me more about those ley line disturbances later, alright? I want to see if I can help handle them.

“And take care of yourself,” she adds. “Let me know what you think about that soup.”

Xiao leaves Liyue Harbor more clear-headed than he has felt in a while. He warms at seeing Ganyu look… happy. Settled. A fellow adeptus, carving out a job and loved ones in a city hardly built for her; as shy as she can be, relentlessly working to create a life of her own. And the traveler—for all her cynicism, holding onto the absurd, ideal hope that her existence has some meaning of its own to the unfeeling universe.

These moments resonate within him, burrowing into his heart, settling there like a layer of mulch over budding flowers. Fresh-smelling and hopeful. The next time he hears a flute song in the wind, Xiao waits for a second, then two, then three, until time blurs together and the melody dies a lonely death, answered only by the birds.

---

The warm atmosphere of Lantern Rite settles over the city gradually, like how early morning fog coats the grass. At night, Xiao can almost see the lights twinkling in the harbor from his perch on the rooftop of the inn.

In previous years, when all the Liyuens sent their wishes floating into the sky, Xiao would quietly, shamefully send up his own and pray the winds would carry it across the sea. His ears would burn at the thought of the god hearing but—he prayed anyway. Sometimes, he was sure he saw a dandelion seed drift by out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned all, he saw was the reveling city.

During this season, people call his name less. Not that monsters ever observe Liyuen holidays, but fewer people decide to set out on risky expeditions across the marshes or into the stone forests, choosing to stay and celebrate with their loved ones. His free time stretches like rope. Xiao tries not to let it choke him. When he finds himself sitting on his hands at night, straining his ears uselessly and craving gentle touches, he shakes himself out of it and goes to find a lawachurl to beat out his frustration.

It kind of works. He's likely eradicated Liyue’s population of lawachurls twice over, but new camps seem to crop up by the day, so the work mercifully never ends.

During the day, he forces himself to go into the harbor more often. As always, people shy from his presence. Keqing explained to him once that being around humans made them feel akin to squirrels around a fox. Something about you registers as a predator, she said, eyeing the mask hanging at his waist. They can't help but startle.

Still, some recognize him. Some even dare to thank him for his services. Xiao watches them go, whispering furiously amongst themselves about having talked to the fabled conqueror of demons , and he doesn't know quite how to feel.

He supposes a healthy instinct of self-preservation does most of them good, as opposed to his blind tendency to hurtle straight towards his own suffering. For him, death is an asymptote towards which his body deteriorates but never quite reaches, his limbs puppeted by the strings of karmic debt. Ever since Zhongli contracted him, Xiao has put great effort into learning immortality as he would a weapon: through ripped skin and raw wounds, every morning heralding new pain, but never an end. At some point, one wonders why they bother avoiding the pain at all.

He thinks of Ganyu. What would she do in this situation? He attempts a close-lipped smile, and it seems only to send the closest people scurrying away. Perhaps his eyes are still glowing too fiercely.

He meanders his way through the harbor, consciously forcing his limbs to relax. Perhaps he should visit Madame Ping, the old adeptus Yaoyao loves to chatter about—but before he can correct his course, a woman’s voice calls out, “Can I interest you in purchasing a vase? Or a fragrance?”

Xiao stops. Turns. “Sorry,” he begins, voice rough with disuse, “I was just—”

“Certainly a handsome young man like you has someone you want to woo? With our scents, you're sure to gain their attention instantly.” The woman smiles. Xiao catalogues the absolute lack of fear present anywhere on her body—no shaking hands, beading sweat, or even the curdling scent of anxiety he typically senses in humans. This woman is either very used to servicing adepti like himself, or slightly insane.

“Your friend Ganyu was just in here last week,” the woman continues, as if hearing his thoughts. “But you don't have to trust me, if you don't wish. After all, anyone who deals in love must be a little insane, don't you agree?”

She retreats back into her small shop, her purple skirt swishing as she walks. Against his rationality, Xiao’s feet carry him inside.

“You suit a delicate scent,” the woman muses, perusing the contents of a drawer with her back turned to the door, as if she knew he would follow her in. “A child of Liyue, yes? Then perhaps qingxin?”

Something prickles at the base of his spine, but nothing about the shop overtly concerns him. The various scents of the shop swirl in a dizzying mixture, not all of them familiar. Xiao recognizes some kind of Sumeran flower—a rose, perhaps? The walls are lined with wooden shelves, displaying bulbous porcelain vases and stacks of books.

“Qingxin extract it is, then. Smell this.” She passes a vial under his nose, so quickly he only catches the tail end of the qingxin’s characteristic sweetness. “Good? I'm thinking slime condensate for a cleansing undertone… perhaps mint as well…”

Her voice trails off as she thinks, eyes boring holes into his being. “A child of Liyue,” she repeats, taking a step forward. “But I smell Mondstadt on you, Xiao.”

It strikes him like a lightning bolt. When he speaks, his tone is frosted over. “Do not presume to know the first thing about me.”

“Ganyu came to me with electro clinging to her sleeves,” the shopkeeper continues. “You… anemo on the lips, the hands. No, no, I believe you would suit cecilia flowers instead.”

“I have an anemo vision,” he says, thousands of years of training fighting to keep his voice steady. “That is all.”

She sighs. “You offend me, Xiao, I'm a professional. What kind of perfumer would I be if I could not tell these things? Now, if this person lives across the sea, you'll have no choice but to visit them so they can get a whiff—”

“There is no one in Mondstadt I would like to visit—”

“It's not that traveler, then, she smells of something else entirely—though she certainly has the odor of power I'm sensing—”

“ Enough, ” Xiao growls. His spear has materialized in his hand, which is unwise as the shop is small enough that one swing would decimate all of the drawers and shelves. He’s tempted to do it anyway. “I do not mean to insult your craft, perfumer, but you are mistaken. If you are claiming to sense things like—like love on others, they have been fortunate guesses so far, but some people may take offense.”

“And is that what you're doing? Taking offense?”

“I am warning you,” he says tightly, “that others may not be as forgiving of these insinuations.”

Xiao feels the need to leave like a scream in his ear. After watching him a moment more, she relents, pulling out a potion from behind her back that Xiao did not see her mix.

“You are afraid,” she says, so matter-of-factly he wants to smack it out of her hands. “You are uncertain of what you, or others, feel. Your past complicates things, yes. You may need time to believe yourself worthy. But love is a thing made for equals, and yours does not seem to stink of the unrequited kind.

“Take this on the house, Xiao,” she murmurs, pressing it into his hand. “It's Lantern Rite.”

As if that provides any explanation for the accusations she just flung at him like a volley of arrows. Still, as if his hands have a mind of their own, Xiao takes the fragrance, instantly sending it to that in-between dimension where he stores his polearm.

He does not flee from the shop, but it's a near thing, the chattering voices of passersby setting him on edge. What could the perfumer know about his decaying body, the constraints of his fate? What “chances” could be afforded to him?

What did she know about his… feelings, requited or unrequited, that he didn't?

Xiao spends Lantern Rite as he usually does, on a rooftop in the terrace watching the festivities below. Despite all his best efforts, before he sends a lantern of his namesake into the sky, a name sneaks into his thoughts unbidden. He is sure that this prayer makes it across the sea.

---

If Xiao were keeping track, which he isn’t, he would know that more than half a year has elapsed since he’d last seen Venti. Not an unforgivable gap, certainly, but perhaps worth some confusion. After all, usually only three months passed between the days his pain flared up, igniting an agony so strong only pleasure could wash it away.

The next time he meets the archon again, then, arises entirely from coincidence.

The air around Mondstadt sings of Windblume. He promised the Liyuen vacationers that he’d only escort them up to the city bounds, as from then on the Knights of Favonius would be available to defend them from monster attacks and carry their heavy baggage. But even the tolling of the church bells seems to signal a lilting festivity, and from afar, the colorful pennants strung around the city gates seem to beckon him closer.

A trap, Xiao thinks. Cheerful things rarely stay as such—a sentiment that is only confirmed when he realizes they’re approaching a massive tree, which would be entirely innocent if not for the figure slumped over himself at the bottom.

Something within him sings at the sight. A wilting flower with just enough strength to poke its head through the melting snow, heralding the arrival of spring. He is a long way from Liyue, but his blood thrums in recognition of home.

“A bard,” the travelers muse as they muddle on, spotting the lyre lying at his side. “Do you think he will be performing later?”

Xiao resists the urge to disappear on the spot. Instead, he spots a welcoming party of knights, shepherds the travelers in their direction, and scans the surrounding area for monster camps before turning to leave. The hydro slimes seem tame around the city, as if they too have absorbed some of its relaxed cheerfulness.

A mournful chord halts him in his tracks.

He curses Venti a thousand times for being able to fluster him to this degree without even acknowledging his presence. The archon knew his limits often better than he knew them himself: anticipating the moments he would lose patience, lose control , and yank Xiao back from the edge with just a word, having gotten Xiao exactly where he wanted him. Shamefaced. Desperate.

Mm, no, I don’t know if you’ve quite earned this one, little bird. And then he would ruin Xiao some more.

The dying tones of the chord hang in the open air, so clear and bright it seems like the world has collapsed to just this moment. Another one follows. One by one, they form a sagging melody: come back, come back, come back.

Xiao is teleporting to the statue before he can think twice. “ What ,” he hisses.

“You stink,” Venti sings, “of cecilias. I could smell you coming from a mile away”

His face burns. “You’re mistaken. I’ve heard once you get to your fifth bottle of dandelion wine, it starts messing with your senses.” He sends a pointed glance at the empty ones lying around Venti’s feet.

Venti giggles like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “Perhaps! Oh, to be honest, I thought I was hallucinating. Surely that isn’t my sweet little bird, come back to the nest, he’s been away for sooo long —”

“ Stop it ,” Xiao growls.

“There’s that blush I’ve missed so much. I hope you know all the prettiest of Dawn Winery wines couldn’t compare to that shade of red—”

“Don’t waste your flattery.”

“Xiao, why won’t you ever let me say that I l—”

“Venti, I can’t see you anymore.”

The words hang thick and horrible in the air. He is suddenly drained dry, sick of waiting and wanting and this stupid, desperate desire to crawl right back into Venti’s arms as if he never left. “So I would appreciate it if you let me go now.”

All traces of festivity have disappeared from Venti’s face. “You don’t mean that, Xiao.”

“I do.”

Venti sits up. His eyes have taken on a faint green glow. “I’m sorry if I’ve neglected you in some way—”

“You haven’t.” Only as much as a master could neglect his subject. “But it hasn’t been working like you promised.” When the pain recedes, I ache more than ever.

“Xiao, don’t do this. I need you. We need each other. What’s a bard without his muse, huh?” His voice shakes. “Xiao. Little bird.”

Xiao wants to kill something. It’s surely a bad habit he picked up from the war, but what else would stop the tremor in his hands besides the familiarity of blood? “I don’t need your help anymore, and you’ve certainly never needed mine. Happy Windblume, archon.”

He does not wait to see the look of devastation Venti wears before he disappears.

Chapter 2

Shuddering breaths paint the cooling autumn air. As Xiao comes down from his high, he allows himself to curl tighter into Venti, his head burrowed into his lap, ignoring the buzzing creeping up his spine. The archon didn’t even shed an article of clothing this time, and the difference between their states—Venti’s poise to Xiao’s desperation—makes Xiao’s head spin.

“It’s Windblume,” he half-says, half-asks. “You’re not in Mondstadt.”

Venti’s smile doesn’t reach his luminous eyes. “Ah, you know I love seeing my people celebrate, but I missed you, Xiao! A festival in my honor wouldn’t be complete without a celebration of you , now, would it? My greatest muse.”

My muse. Venti says that often, and Xiao never knows whether to be pleased or disappointed. It is a term fitting for a poet and subject. Distanced. Reverential. Venti’s voice dips and curls around the word, soft as his caress over Xiao’s hair. But something in Xiao bristles at the thought of Venti seeing him in the throes of pleasure, broken and bent raw, and finding only poetry. Venti compares his eyes to molten gold, warm sunshine, blooming lotuses, and other infinitely beautiful things, but he never comments how on any battlefield, amidst the gore and screams, Xiao’s eyes always find Venti first.

A poet loves his muse not for itself, but because it inspires.

“Forced levity is not a good look on you,” Xiao says shortly. “Be honest with me.” Please.

Venti’s hand pauses in his hair. The air trembles for only a moment before he resumes his stroking. “Ah, don’t be annoyed,” he sighs. “Is there something bothering you?” He plucks a sweet flower from the ground and manages to tuck it behind Xiao’s ear before Xiao bats his hand away.

“Stop avoiding the question.”

“You never asked one,” Venti teases, but he knows when to stop pushing. He falls silent for a moment. “Alcohol is meant to make you forget, you know. But strangely enough, every time I drink, I remember most clearly the things I sometimes wish would fade.”

“Like what?”

“The last time I saw this face on someone else, for instance.”

Xiao’s heard this story before. He looks up: pale skin and the gentle curve of Venti’s noise. A rounded jaw and perfect smile lines at the corners of his eyes. He always found it strange that an archon would choose to wear wrinkles. His fingers curl around the prickling grass.

“How do you bear it?” he murmurs. “Wearing his face? Hearing your people celebrate your victory?”

“Oh, I can’t look in the mirror some days,” Venti shrugs. “And sometimes I want to smash every statue of me that stands in Mondstadt. But this face belonged to him, and I was entirely his, so it’s only fitting I wear it, hm?

“I’ve learned that I prefer to commemorate beauty. Even when it’s too painful to look at.” He traces the tattoos on Xiao’s bicep with featherlight fingers. “Even when it might disappear.”

They are quiet for a long time, after that.

Xiao might doze off for a moment as the sun dips below the horizon, or when the stars rise too-bright in the sky. In any case, it must be a dream when he feels Venti press his lips to the crown of his head one last time.

“Xiao, my muse. You make me want to sing, and it’s hard to forget anything you put into song.”

---

Once in a while, Zhongli invites him to play house at Third-Round Knockout.

“No wine for you. I remember,” Zhongli says, as if it’s something to be proud of. They’ve been doing this since the elderly owner, Degui, was a fresh-faced youth who would battle in drinking contests with his customers.

The god orders an osmanthus wine for himself. As they wait, he observes Xiao the way he might evaluate a gemstone. “You seem more settled lately.”

“In what way.”

“Ganyu mentioned this to me the last time you passed by. But now that you sit before me, I agree. Zhiruo’s hand faltered twice as she was pouring your tea, and you did not narrow your eyes once.”

“I cannot blame humans for being wary of me still.”

“Mm. But you always secretly wished they were not, and you found it difficult to control your impatience when they were.”

“With all due respect, master, there is no point to call something a ‘secret’ if you say it so openly.”

Zhongli smiles. “I don’t believe I’ve been your master for a long time now. As you know, when I killed Rex Lapis, the contract dissolved.”

“Force of habit,” Xiao responds simply.

In truth, he agrees: ever since the other yakshas died, quickly becoming a distant legend to the residents of Liyue, Zhongli’s eyes never truly looked the same again. No longer did he serve a warmongering god, but accompany a grieving one. Now only dust motes tremble when Morax walks among them.

But Xiao does not operate like Fontaine’s Gardemeks—his hardware is not so easily updated. How does one address someone they were bound to for so long, if not “master”? Zhongli never gave commands without reason, and that meant Xiao never questioned him either. It was a relief to believe in Zhongli’s infinite wisdom, to believe without doubt there was a side of the war that was wrong and unjust. When Zhongli sent him onto the battlefield, Xiao closed his eyes and raised his polearm, and he did not know anything else after that.

“Onto other matters, then—the traveler informed me of recent ley line disturbances in Mondstadt.”

“I thought you said no work talk at these gatherings, Zhongli.”

“To be precise, it was Director Hu who insisted upon that the first few times she joined us.”

“She’s busy these days?”

“Mm.” Zhongli doesn’t elaborate. “In any case. The ley lines in Mondstadt—”

“That’s not my domain to deal with. Surely the traveler is capable enough.”

“She has better things to do in Teyvat, Xiao. You know this.”

Better things.

Xiao stares at his teacup. He’s never questioned the importance of his mission. All these centuries as soldier, weapon, guardian must have been worth something. He couldn’t expect thanks, but he might have hoped for—what? Some sort of acknowledgment from his wielder? More than occasional whiffs of burnt incense?

When he gazes across the table, Zhongli looks like he regrets saying it, but it is not in the archon’s nature to take back his words.

“Then let Mondstadt’s archon take care of it.”

“I would not trust Venti further than the depth of his tankard,” Zhongli says. “And he has been… volatile, lately.”

Ah. And there is the real reason Zhongli has brought him here. His golden eyes meet Xiao’s own, searching for a clue. Xiao doesn’t question how Zhongli knows. His cries have probably echoed around the forest during one of their trysts.

He stays silent. Zhongli sighs.

“It’s important that Liyue and Mondstadt can continue collaborating in the case of a common enemy. The traveler is almost to Snezhnaya.”

“Then you can tell Venti to stop being a child. I still do not see how that’s my responsibility,” Xiao says tightly.

“He does not listen to me—”

“And he would to me? A soldier?”

“You have not fought a war in a long time—”

“ I will always be what I am, ” Xiao hisses, and the teacup rattles on its plate. A tendril of black smoke winds around the leg of his chair. He grits his teeth and settles.

Zhongli’s eyes are sad when he looks at him. It is a startlingly human emotion that drags at the corners of his mouth where his lips purse. He almost seems to be developing wrinkles, creases that might mark smiles or frowns. It is good that Zhongli is growing into his newfound existence.

On the other hand, Xiao’s very bones ache for everything to end—for Venti to either take him back or let him go forever, for Zhongli to dispose of him the way he was always meant to when the war was over, for madness to sink its claws into his mind and scramble his thoughts to dust. He thought he was done waiting for the axe to drop on his neck; after all, it’s been a year, maybe two since he first considered carving out another existence for himself. But Xiao’s breaths are still short, and his first instinct is still to turn everything around him to rubble, and he just wants to be held by the anemo archon one more time.

“I’m not blaming you for… the way he’s been lately,” Zhongli begins. “Venti is one of my more difficult colleagues. He refuses to show even his own people the extent of his devotion because he believes nothing is more important than their freedom—even their well-being. He seems careless at times, weak, though I know he is anything but. It can be frustrating.” Zhongli glances at Xiao’s tattoos. “Can you imagine that? A freedom so precious you would sacrifice almost everything else you held dear?”

“Don’t be cruel, Zhongli. You know I can’t.”

“All I mean is that you two are different—but not irreparably so. In fact, I think it’s good for him. Maybe even for you, too. Talk to him, please. It may prove mutually beneficial.”

Xiao does not know the difference between selflessness and selfishness anymore.

He imagines himself an archon. He imagines a nation under his wing and is momentarily wracked with the fierce, unmistakable urge to protect them with everything he has. It does not matter if they hate him. It does not matter if he is dead. He would protect them regardless.

But that is all he has ever known—tragedy for the sake of something greater than himself. What if you are the greatest thing your people know? Is it harder to throw your life away on the battlefield for their sake, or keep your careful, agonizing distance for eons, so they may continue to prosper?

Xiao does not pretend to know the way that archons think. But as he digs in his pocket dimension for spare mora to cover their bill, Zhongli watching quietly from across the table, he searches within himself for the capacity to understand.

---

He is almost too late to the battlefield.

Ganyu never grew fully comfortable with melee combat. He sees her wincing as she narrowly dances out of the way of a samachurl’s torrent. He would consider this good practice for her if it weren’t for the black blood trickling from her hairline and several gashes on her arms. Her eyes are beginning to glaze over.

“On your left,” he mutters as he materializes next to her, piercing a geovishap through a chink in its armored plates. It screeches and burrows into the earth to regroup. “You’re outnumbered. You should’ve called for reinforcements earlier.”

She musters enough energy for an indignant look. “I could’ve—”

“Save your breath. The mage is getting ready to summon more demon heads. Take it out.”

Ganyu grumbles, but she turns so that he’s protecting her back and nocks her arrow.

The rhythm of battle flows over him like a breeze. The swings of his polearm are methodical and measured; he wastes no energy on flourishes, only pausing to dodge the patches of ice that Ganyu’s arrows create in the marsh, and he aims with the intent to kill. As he fights, black blood coats his blade, then splashes up his forearms, then splatters onto his shoulder pads and paints the curve of his jaw. He ensures that his hands do not slip on the handle, and he continues.

The moves are undoubtedly familiar—but the hairs on the back of his neck prick to attention, as if lightning is about to strike him where he stands. A metallic smell tinges the air. He’s long since learned to trust his instincts on the battlefield. “Ganyu,” he shouts, plunging his polearm through a hilichurl, “how did you know about this outbreak?”

“I didn’t!” she shouts back. “I just saw this group as I was passing by the area!” She’s resorted to freezing her enemies so that she has a chance to shoot them at close distance, which is—risky. And unsustainable. He knows how quickly that tires her.

“Did you do reconnaissance?”

“No time! Travelers passing through!”

Xiao barely has time to wonder if the travelers are now in a safe place. “Ganyu, you need to leave now.”

“I can’t just—”

“They’re calling reinforcements.” Though Xiao had broken the abyss mage’s shield, he’d had to deal with more pressing matters like the mitachurls charging him, and the mage was now muttering to itself in the distance. He grit his teeth. “Get Zhongli, if you can.”

“But what if you—”

“ Go ,” Xiao growls. His bones feel as if they’re grinding to dust, but there’s no point in bemoaning it. Every battle ends like this: either he wins, and thoroughly drains himself in the process, or he ends his long, long life by failing at the one thing he was built for. Inexplicably, he chooses the first option each time.

Ganyu’s about to argue again, he can see it in the way her violet eyes narrow, but she cuts herself off with a shriek of warning. He dashes to avoid the blow, and by the time he materializes again several feet from where a mitachurl just buried its ax in the ground, Ganyu has disappeared.

He can’t remember what happens after that. It’s not uncommon for his memories of the battlefield to dissipate into a crimson-tinted haze. It makes the recovery easier if he can only remember brief flashes of the carnage, like the whites of his opponents’ eyes widening as he drives his spear clean through their heart.

Xiao does recall stumbling away from the field at some point, limping on the leg whose flesh isn’t bubbling from a burst of pyro and coughing up blood that stains the withering grass black with remnants of abyssal energy. He musters enough energy to teleport but doesn’t have the strength to focus on where—the inn would be nice. Or perhaps the traveler’s strange adeptal teapot. Somewhere he can rest, feel safe or even cared for—

“Xiao?”

Blearily, he blinks his eyes open. He’s on a mountaintop, a carpet of gold leaves beneath his feet. He recognizes this place. He’s experienced salvation here before.

He’s been hurt here before.

“Xiao, little bird, what happened to you?”

The figure in front of him sounds frantic enough that Xiao tries to focus, make out who it is. The name won’t come to mind but by the archons his battered, decaying soul sings with recognition. If he could just…

His polearm thunks at his feet. He collapses in waiting arms and barely has enough energy to murmur an apology for staining the soft teal of their sleeves.

A gentle voice hums a shaky tune above him, and Xiao closes his eyes and does not dream.

---

His limbs are sinking in worn-soft sheets. Xiao fights the currents pulling him under and blinks awake to the sight of familiar wood-grain walls.

He’s in his room at the inn. He can move his fingers, he’s thinking clearly, and though lingering pain crackles in his left leg like dormant lightning, Xiao can probably walk through it. All in all, he resigns himself to the mundane truth of remaining alive.

At least, he thinks it mundane until he pushes himself up on his elbows and finds a pair of teal eyes on him, wide and infuriatingly piteous.

“No.”

Venti attempts a tremulous smile. “You do have such a way with words, Xiao.”

“No, you don’t get to do this now. I wasn’t in my right mind when I came to you. I only did it because—” He chokes down whatever had been about to bubble out of his mouth. Disorientation makes him too honest. No doubt he would have said something like because I needed a safe place , and wouldn’t that have been mortifying?

In any case, it’s no use. Venti’s eyes soften. “Everyone needs help sometimes. Even the prickliest of adepti.”

It’s quite unfair, really, that Venti can stand there with a cup of what looks like tea steaming in his hand, with his dip-dyed hair falling out of his loose braids, and make Xiao want to forget all the times he’s left carnage and waste in the cavity where Xiao’s heart resides.

There is nothing godlike about Venti like this, clad in a loose white tunic and knee-length shorts, his bare feet shuffling on the creaking floor. Weak sunlight trickles between the red tartan curtains, with no idea how fortunate it is to be kissing the archon’s eyelashes and the curl of his delicate fingers around the base of the cup.

Xiao had that privilege once. But maybe he didn’t suit soft kisses. Maybe it was tiring for Venti, dealing with someone who flinched at every touch. Maybe even now, as Venti inches closer to him and holds out tea like a shield before him, he sees a beast in the bed, kicking and clawing at receiving exactly the kind of treatment it deserves.

He takes the tea and ignores how their fingers brush in the exchange. Jasmine and qingxin wash over him in a cleansing breath; he soaks the warmth in like the cats that sun themselves in the pavilion of the inn.

“You’re right,” Xiao begins, keeping his voice carefully flat. “I came to you because I needed help. That’s unfair of me after I told you to stay away, so I apologize. It must have been confusing for you, archon.”

Venti flinches like Xiao’s summoned his spear. “Don’t call me that.”

A spark of irritation lights in Xiao’s chest. Oh, he wants to be mean. He wants to see Venti’s eyes fill with pearlescent tears; he wants some sign the god has been hurting like he is, and for once he lets his control slip loose. “What would you like me to call you, then.” The corner of his mouth twitches upward, wry and cruel. “You had no problem with me moaning it when—”

“Xiao, don’t do this now, please. You’re injured. Let me take care of you.”

He worries the cup will shatter in his hand. He finds some sick satisfaction in how unbalanced the archon looks when he gingerly takes a seat on the edge of the bed. “Oh, of course. When would be a better time for you, hmm? You know me, always waiting at your beck and call, like a dog. When’s it going to be, my lord?” Xiao’s lip curls. “Or should I call you master ?”

The word hovers horrible and deafening between them. There it is—tears welling in Venti’s eyes. The sight only spurs Xiao further.

“You don’t get to cry now. I didn’t cry each time you left me on that cliff; I’m used to it, you know, being discarded. Celestia forbid you finally think of someone other than yourself. What exactly do you care for ? It can’t be me, pitiful and pathetic —” he spits the word like venom, “—and it’s certainly not your people.”

Venti whispers, broken and quivering, “I wish you wouldn’t call yourself that. I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

“Yes, well.” Xiao’s voice cracks. His fists clench around the covers as he forces his next words out. “Forgive me if apologies mean little coming from you, bard. I know how you twist your words.”

A low blow. He knows why the archon sings—to keep his friend alive, to remind his audience of forgotten heroes, to explain the face he wears. The god’s tears trace the curve of his cheek down to the delicate point of his chin. Xiao wants to kiss them away. He wants to lay waste to the inn. He wants to take back everything he’s said in the past year and be content again with laying his head in Venti’s lap, listening to his silken voice explain the chord progression of his latest composition, basking in Venti’s fond laughter when he drily critiques a lyric, clutching at memories of warmth when the archon leaves.

You’re impossible to please , Venti would remark. It’s true. Xiao can’t stop himself from wanting more.

“I know it’s selfish of me,” Venti says, taking a shuddering breath, “but I didn’t want to stop seeing you."

“Surely you can find more deserving company.”

“I know,” the god says, and despite it all Xiao can’t stop hurt from lancing through his chest, but Venti continues, “and that’s why I’m selfish, Xiao. You’re far too good for me.” Teal eyes, fathomless as the sea, boundless as the sky. “I want you all for myself.”

Xiao scoffs. “You don’t mean it. You’re always leaving. If you wanted me then you would have—”

“Trapped you? Locked you down to me?” Venti manages a frankly pitiful attempt at a smile. “You wouldn’t appreciate another set of binds. You’ve said it yourself.”

“How self-sacrificing of you,” Xiao snarls, “using me for more pleasure, throwing me aside when you’re done. Yes, it must have been so difficult to keep your precious freedom—”

“Xiao, please.”

“—don’t you understand , if you only call me when I’m needed then discard me, you are no better than—” he forces the next words out, “—than the one who first enslaved me.”

“How can you say that, you can’t say that,” Venti exclaims, high and desperate. He turns to face Xiao fully, clutching the covers like he might float away. “I’ve seen you on a battlefield more times than I can count, more times than you remember. When you showed up yesterday looking like that , I almost razed the plains, Zhongli’s territory be damned. I thought some human had called on you, that you were protecting someone again and gotten yourself half-killed in the process, and I wanted to pulverize them. I can’t protect you from everything, that’s not—that’s not who I am. That’s not who you are.” A wet laugh. “Celestia knows, you’ve protested against my help enough times already.

“I can’t be one of your keepers. You said it yourself—I never even learned to love my own people. They suffered so long under an iron fist. It’s best for everyone if I just—if I learn to let them go. You deserve more than wars in your name.”

Xiao stares. “That’s the only kind of love I know, Venti.”

Venti’s mouth trembles. “Then I’ll have to show you another. But don’t leave again. You—you can take a break, if you want. If I’m too much. Just don’t leave.”

Xiao dazedly wonders where it all went wrong—how Venti could have thought caring for him was too much . For nearly two years, Xiao wrestled with the idea that he had never been found worthy of a promise. He was many things, but never a reason to stay. And now Venti was calling him something worth fighting for, something worth keeping.

“You could have let me know earlier,” he whispers, weary. “You should have said.”

“I know,” Venti says. “I’m sorry, little bird.”

They sit together on the bed. There’s nothing to do but swallow it all—whatever clumsy, aching thing they’ve learned to call theirs. Xiao takes a sip of his now-lukewarm tea, and tries to trust that Venti understands the gesture for what it is.