Work Text:
As always, Xiao finds her wandering the woods of Wuwang Hill.
It's not a place Xiao frequents. Mostly because he tries not to move around much, lest his karma seep into any otherwise peaceful monsters. Threats to Wangshu Inn are already a handful, how much more could threats spread across Liyue be? He's but one yaksha tasked to protect thousands of people. It would be... taxing. Especially now that they've practically chosen to sever ties with the adepti.
(It isn't quite like that, but it is. The newness of the arrangement still leaves a strange taste in his mouth.)
It's not the kind of place one really chooses to visit during their free time either. Wuwang Hill is dense trees and dark, twisted paths to many after all. Ever present darkness and wisps of the dead lingering.
He's never cared about any of that. To Xiao, it's simply where the border is. Where the dead come to pass. It's peaceful quiet and the comforting chill of familiar winds.
It's where he always finds her.
"Oh? A visitor so late at night? Ah, and the Vigilant Yaksha of all people! What brings you out here so far from home at this hour?"
Hu Tao is perched atop the rock she usually rests on when he finds her there. An enormous, slanted stone jutting from the ground by the domain sitting dormant in the heart of the greenery. With how often he sees her on it, it may as well be her stone rather than the forest's. It's a very familiar sight to him now.
But something feels... mildly unsettling about it this time.
"I have no home. We've been over this," he responds nonchalantly, crossing his arms. He masks the wariness in his tone carefully. "I sensed bloodlust in the area. I came to investigate."
Hu Tao grins, pointing at his feet. His gaze follows, trailing down to the grass, scorched and trampled.
"Taken care of," she says proudly, "just some Fatui slinking around trying to find artifacts worth selling. Aiya! You'd think with all the stories going around about cursed objects, they'd avoid seeking them out, but alas."
"Cursed objects don't exist," he states bluntly. If they do then Xiao's never encountered one. The possibility irks him, but it's mostly outweighed by relief.
Threats taken care of. Liyue lives to thrive another night. That doesn't explain the unnerve though.... What is it?
Hu Tao shrugs. "Well, I wouldn't put it past humans to conjure up something in the coming years. You know how they get." She waves a hand dismissively. "Too fussy for their own good."
"You speak as if you aren't one," Xiao observes.
Hu Tao grins. "Not a normal one at least! Or so I've been told."
"They're right."
"Who is?"
"Whoever tells you that you aren't normal."
He ignores the dramatic gasp that escapes her, choosing to finally turn away. He's no longer needed here. Mild unnerve be damned. Everything seems to be fine, Xiao has every intention of leaping away before Hu Tao suddenly speaks up again.
"Bye bye, Xiao!"
Xiao stills. He turns back around. Hu Tao is already looking away, at the wisps of blue that inhabit the forest.... Wistfulness. This is unusual.
Hu Tao giggles, turning back to him. "Is it really?"
He'd spoken aloud, he realizes, when her grin only widens. Got you. He has the grace to look mildly ruffled. (Not sheepish. He's rarely ever sheepish.)
"You're not usually so easy to get away from."
"Apologies for always holding you back before then." She sticks out her tongue. "I should know better than to bother an almighty adepti."
Xiao blinks. Something is definitely wrong.
Hu Tao says nothing else, looking back at the wisps.
She's giving him a choice, he realizes. It’s in the way she refuses to make eye contact, the way she stays still on that rock, and how fast the grin slips off her face when she turns away from him. It's especially jarring when faced with all of it at once.
Choices. Xiao’s never had an abundance of those. Neither has he ever had much to do with his time at such a late hour.
What he does next he’ll blame on something else in the morning, some unique sort of karma or a lapse in judgement. Anything that doesn’t make him look vulnerable. (He’s never had the luxury to be able to.)
Xiao leaps. Not away, but onto the rock Hu Tao is perched on. She only looks mildly surprised to be met with his eyes as he sits. In the quiet, it’s all he can focus on.
“Is my behavior so unforgivable that you feel the need to punish me with your presence, o great yaksha?” The touch of sardonicism in her words convince him he’d made the right choice.
He knows that tone, has heard it in his own voice. He knows what it means.
“Cease your flowery language.” He looks away. Hu Tao giggles. “Fatui travel in packs. Staying behind to make sure they’ve truly been driven away is only the most logical course of action.”
The girl pouts. “Eh? That almost sounds like you doubt my strength.”
He shakes his head. “What I doubt is their ability to stay down.”
Hu Tao hums. “Well, they are persistent. It’s irritating sometimes, having to come out all the way here to drive them away. The Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor has better things to do, you know?” She leans back against her hands, looking up at the sky. Her rings glitter in the moonlight. “I swear it’s as if they want me to beat them up some days. How masochistic.”
Xiao watches the wisps around them when he says, “Your duty isn’t bound here. I’m certain you have a number of capable people under your employ. If you’re so bothered, stationing them here seems like a wise decision.”
It doesn’t quite sound like advice, but he’s certain Hu Tao knows that it is. She’s one of the few who don’t fear him enough to run away as soon as he speaks, one of the few who takes note of what specific inflections mean on his tongue and how he chooses his words carefully.
To be fair, it’s not as if Xiao speaks to a lot of people on a regular basis in the first place. Verr Goldet, Morax, Barbatos, Ganyu, other fellow adepti, it’s not a long list, but he supposes that’s what makes it all the more significant. Barring Verr Goldet, Hu Tao is the only— has only ever been the one mortal capable of reading him so readily.
But it’s a two-way street. This is why he’s here now. Trying to find out what the faux happiness is for. He’d sensed it for what it was the second he stepped foot on Wuwang Hill. He’d sensed it and he’d been bothered.
Hu Tao hums, still gazing up at the night sky. “A brilliant suggestion, but you’d be surprised how many people live in fear of this place.”
“They work in a place of death,” he deadpans.
“And people who fear drowning sometimes become sailors. My people can work around dead bodies and still be afraid of a place like this. They’re not mutually exclusive. Humans are… interesting in that way.”
It’s surprising how often someone who speaks so whimsically speaks the truth. Hu Tao is more critical than people give her credit for.
“Besides,” she continues, “I like coming out here anyway. Would you believe me if I said it was therapeutic?”
He would. Since it’s her. “If that’s the case then your complaining is-”
“Contradictory, I know.” She sighs. “But I can complain about something I like.”
Something that resembles a sound of amusement escapes him. “For someone who judges other humans so thoroughly, you have the tendency to fall into the same habits.”
Hu Tao giggles, finally leaning forward and meeting his gaze. “Daresay it’s the only thing that makes me human. Besides my mortality, that is.”
Xiao doesn’t know what to say to that (was there even an appropriate response?), so he keeps his mouth shut. She is correct after all. Hu Tao’s stare lingers for a moment longer before she hugs her knees to her chest. She seems to be satisfied with maintaining the silence. It’s unusual for her, but it’s pleasant.
They’re still not talking about it. Whatever he’s certain is bothering her, but their relationship has always been her being the talker and him being the listener. Whatever she has to say will come out eventually, when she’s ready. Xiao will wait for it. There’s nothing too bad about companionable silence anyway, not in such a peaceful place.
“Today marks my grandfather’s death anniversary.”
Oh.
“I….” Xiao tries to find the words. He doesn't. “I see.”
He’s not good at comfort. Especially about matters like death. After all, he’s had to bring it to countless unfortunate souls over the centuries, some unlucky, some deserved. Xiao has been stared at with unadulterated rage as he drained the lives of scummy humans. Desperation. Guilt. Hatred. Regret. He knows all the ways people have suffered by his hand and other fellow yaksha. He knows death. Much more than he’d like to.
So it’s not that he can’t talk about death. It’s that he can’t talk about it in a way that comforts her.
Because he’s seen what it’s done to the people around his victims. They cry. They mourn. They fear a side they know nothing about, focusing on a lifeless body that serves no more purpose in the world. They break and while others can overcome the tragedy and move on, some simply… don’t.
For all his knowledge, Xiao’s not exactly sure which category Hu Tao falls in.
“Stunned you into silence more than once tonight.” Hu Tao’s light chuckle invades his thoughts. It sounds vulnerable somehow. “I feel accomplished.”
“I can’t offer you sugarcoated words.” He offers her nothing but the truth. “The things I have to say about these subjects are… unkind.”
Amusement dances in her eyes. “Do they involve telling me to accept death for what it is and move on? That obsessing over a flame extinguished is useless? Because human life is fleeting anyway?”
His silence serves as a satisfactory answer. Hu Tao grins.
“Wonderful wisdom as always, Vigilant Yaksha! Your words carry more truth than those of the people telling me my grandfather is ‘always with me.’”
Xiao scoffs on impulse. “They believe that?”
Hu Tao nods, shrugging. “Yes, and they think telling me that makes me feel better. I don’t really have the heart to tell them otherwise. Such a hassle to explain sometimes.”
Xiao knows the feeling. Humans are taxing to deal with. Sentimental fools who value the impermanent. They think of the other side as a metaphor more often than not. Not an actual place where souls of the dead rest. For someone who speaks as callously as Hu Tao, he suspects her explanations would only cause turmoil.
“As for the people who tell me he’s in a better place,” she continues, “they have it more right than they’d think. I’ve never been to the other side of course, but, if it’s anything like the border, I’m sure grandfather is doing alright,” she chirps.
Her smile is a little more sincere then, nearer to the more genuine ones he’s seen on her face. Xiao hasn’t done a lot, but whatever it is he’s doing seems to be helping.
“Aw, you look confused! So many sides of you I’m seeing tonight, Xiao!”
He swats away the hand that’s about to poke his cheek before crossing his arms. “It’s not a happy day for you, yet you seem… cheerful. Why is that?”
Hu Tao seems to consider her answer, going back to leaning against her hands. She’s not looking at him again and a part of him wonders if her response will be one of dismissal.
“Well, I’m not completely my lovely, bubbly self. Which is why I’m here and... why I’m thinking you stayed.” Xiao nods when she glances at him. She smiles. “I’m a touch sad of course. I miss him, but he’s gone now. We share the same belief, right? ‘No use mourning those who have gone.’ That does nothing for them and barely anything for me. So I try to carry on as I always do, you know? Work, play, and all that. But I guess days like this just… trigger a stronger sense of longing.”
The smile turns wistful as she holds his gaze.
“Even you aren’t immune to missing people, aren’t you, Xiao?”
He is, in fact, not so lucky.
Xiao remembers longing for the sun when he’d first been... corrupted. He remembers the burning in his chest each time a yaksha fell into insanity and the string that still pulls at him whenever people talk of the electro yaksha’s disappearance. He thinks of the sensation he’d felt upon news of Morax’ supposed demise and the persistent ache he gets when Barbatos comes and goes.
“...I’m not.”
Besides Barbatos, Hu Tao is probably the only being in Teyvat who has the gall to lean against him, grinning all the while. Her cheek warms his shoulder. Xiao feels no need to push her away.
“Something we have in common then. A flaw for you considering you’re supposed to be an almighty adepti.”
Xiao makes a sound that resembles a snort. “I can acknowledge an inconsistency while also partaking in it.”
“You’re learning!” Hu Tao exclaims happily. “Though it’s a bit late for someone over thousands of years old.”
“It’s not something I just learned today.”
“It certainly seemed that way.”
“Don’t push it.”
“Push.”
She boops his nose then, giggling and even someone as stoic as Xiao has to fight the urge to grin a little. He settles for rolling his eyes fondly. Hu Tao doesn’t point it out.
The rest of the night passes by in companionable silence and idle conversation. She asks him if he’d consider passing out coupons for Wangsheng at Wangshu Inn. He declines of course. He tells her about Ganyu seeking him out. She makes a note to visit the Qixing more often. She has the courage to ask him about his love life and doesn’t seem to believe him when he says there’s nothing to talk about. (Says there’s a glint in his eyes. He'll have to tamp that down the next time Barbatos decides to bother him.)
Eventually, she falls asleep at one point and he takes it upon himself to quietly bring her back to Liyue Harbor. He knows where she lives. She’d told him about how she presided on the second floor of Wangsheng Funeral Parlor on a whim once. Not a detail one easily forgets.
He locates the right room and places Hu Tao gently on the bed. Xiao’s just about to leap back into the night when she surprises him by speaking.
“Thank you for tonight, Xiao. Seems I only needed a bit of pleasant conversation to cheer up. To think I retreated there for a bit of solace.”
Idly wondering when she could’ve woken up in his arms, Xiao turns to her, arms crossed. “Don’t make a habit of taking on formidable foes alone in such isolated places.”
“Eh? Still doubting my st-”
She stops talking upon seeing his raised hand. He’d expected a protest. She may be able to read him, but some areas still require improvement.
“I’m saying that you’re free to call upon me whenever the need arises.”
Hu Tao blinks (Xiao counts this as a win) before she cracks a wide, genuine smile.
“Oh? What an honor! To be blessed by the Vigilant Yaksha himself.”
“If you call for me to take care of mundane matters, I’ll stop coming.”
“For reference, what’s classified as mundane?”
“Carrying you wherever you please.”
“Aw, I wanted to make a habit of it.”
He rolls his eyes. “Goodnight, Hu Tao.”
She giggles. “Fare thee well, Xiao.”
Xiao arrives at Wangshu Inn just as the first rays of sunlight peek through the clouds. He thinks he spent his night well.