Work Text:
Xiao does not falter when he jumps off one of Liyue’s highest peaks, spear in hand, a death wish plunge down the ravine. He does not falter when he bolts towards the demons rising from gods long gone, fast as need be. He never falters when putting on the mask of the yaksha, that which earned him a title in the stories of mortals: Bane of All Evil. He shall strike, he shall cut and he shall maim until there’s no remnants of divine hatred to raze the land he’s sworn to protect, until that divine hatred is cast upon himself. Such is his duty. Such is the service to his god. Such is the only way his life can play out in the grand schemes of fate.
And when he kneels on the ground, spear buried deep in the marsh the only thing holding him up, blood washing away in intricate shapes in the water, he does not falter, but keeps watch instead.
And when he forgoes sleep to keep watch, the wind whistles through the reeds and graces his tired body with a song. Gentle, fresh against his skin. Blows on his gashes, caresses his bruises, quiets the voices in his mind. In the newfound silence, he swears the breeze carries the sound of a flute. As the night spins on, so does the piece. As he glances over Guyun, for a moment, the wind whispers sound like peace.
“For your service,” Morax drops a kneaded sphere of herbs into his palms. “For the pain to subside. I apologize that it cannot be more than this.”
Xiao holds the medicine, rolls it in his hand. And it dawns on him that it has to be Morax, the song, the quiet, for who would grant him such a gift if not for the god who granted him freedom? Who else would care if not for the one who saw in him something worth saving? Who else would it be, when mortals dare not pray to him and his bad omen of a presence? Who else would it be when the other people he once found solace in are buried deep under, when the gentlest goddess he ever met is nothing but dust in the wind?
“Thank you, my lord,” He breathes from such depths in his heart that it makes all the words he has spoken until then feel like a lie.
On battle-filled nights, after stubborn spirits are defeated and the song arrives, Xiao picks a place under the moon and mimics what he hears in the breeze. Fingers fidget along a dizi gifted by an adeptus with the face of an old woman. The first attempts are clumsy, too foreign for hands that have only ever known violence, but the wind blows a bit harder every time he hits the right notes. Eyes on Guyun Stone Forest, heart cradled by gales, Xiao learns.
And then Xiao picks up the flute every spring, honoring the melody his god plays for him, honoring the lives of the adepti that succumbed to divine hatred. May their spirits find peace as I do when this song whistles through the reeds.
It comes a day when Morax falls and Osial rouses once again. Xiao does not falter, grips his spear, takes the leap. This time, though, he is alone no more. Neither do they falter, the adepti and humans both, and Osial is sealed under strike of a sky-roaming palace. A sacrifice for the new times. The time of men in which Xiao is no longer needed.
Unbound. No duty, no gods to consecrate to.
On a rainy day at Wangshu Inn, the traveller speaks of a proposal. "Come with me on the quest to look for my sibling. Even if it's just for a while."
So Xiao does, at least for a while, he thinks.
On a star-filled night, he is brought to meet the rest of the group at a campsite.
"This is Venti," Xiao is told. A small bard clad in green clothes plays a melody by the fire.
And then the first few notes tug on his heart. Xiao's head explodes into recognition, a tempest in his skull. That is the song that silences the voices, that is the song which tends to his aching bones. It is the song that whistles through the reeds, the one he plays for the dead, the one his god plays for him.
Except it was never his god's to begin with.
And when the bard turns around, something else is made known to Xiao. Something else is summoned from within the well of his past, a stark contrast against monotone endless fights and sleepless nights.
The deep cut across his navel sputters blood. Shattered mask, gnashed teeth. A hand to the pain and he’s on his knees, and it’s worth it, he thinks, for the evil he chased is no more. His body shall heal so long as there is a duty to fulfill.
The marsh dances around him, a strong gust battering his clothes. Arms to his face, he takes cover. But just as it came it fades to a breeze, and before him stands a small figure, lithe and graceful. A speck of light in his field of vision. He holds a lyre and the braids around his face are the color of jade, much like the color of the eyes that regard him, an enrapturing storm. Enveloped in wings too wide for his form, there is a heavenly air to him, not unlike the flickers of hate he fights against, not unlike the aura surrounding his own god.
He calls him by a dead name.
“Alatus, Golden Winged King.”
Xiao does not answer.
A hand extends to take off what is left of his mask and cup his cheek. The stranger kneels too, eye to eye. “I grant you this vision, hoping you may one day feel free.” And with that, a turquoise glow spills from his fingers, sliding down Xiao’s neck to take his wrist. The softest touch he’s felt since the embraces of the goddess of dust. A diamond shaped vision encrusts on the glove covering his left arm.
“I am already free,” Xiao mutters, furious at the implication of the words but unable to turn away all the same.
“What does freedom really mean, when demanded of you by a god?” And with a smile, he’s gone.
In the years passing by, Xiao tends to his duty. In the years that pass by, watchful gaze over Liyue, he finds that when he looks at his wrist, there is no memory of why a vision adorns it.
Now the memory surfaces pulled back by the face that stares at him. An easy grin, crinkled eyes.
"Venti? So that's the name he goes by."
"Huh?" The traveller asks, eyebrows quirked.
"His tunes are—" Xiao looks to the side, hangs his head low, dismissing his previous words with a gesture. "...forget it."
The bard waves from the tree he is resting under and when he strums his lyre, the song he was playing resumes.
And when Xiao sits cross-legged in front of the fire, he is overcome by a sudden sense of liberty.