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Xiao didn’t really understand love. The warmness and intimacy of it all, it was simply something he tended to stay away from, whether from fear or doubt. The very concept of love was so foreign to him, something so intangible and vague that he never managed to place a firm grasp on.
Xiao never thought himself capable of love, an emotion more human than any other. The entire idea of love puzzled him; how could exposing one’s most vulnerable self to another bring any mere sense of comfort? If Xiao held any life lessons close to his heart, it would be to always be on your guard, on the watch for danger, for it could strike at any second. Even a single moment of weakness could lead to one’s tragic downfall. This was the harsh truth of reality, one that he had forcefully swallowed down in between dust blown battlefields and scattered, bloodstained lifeless bodies.
Xiao often thought love to be too confusing, it is itself too fickle, too faint of an emotion to truly hold on to. He only knew that as he looked to the free-spirited bard with the gleaming sea-green eyes, beaming at him through the rustling crowd of Mondstadt, he would cross the fires for him.
He would scale a mountain of slicing blades, plunge into a sea of blazing flames, with no hesitation.
For him, there were no limits that would faze Xiao.
-
Thousands of years ago, Xiao followed Rex Lapis out of loyalty, with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and the blatant bravery that bordered on the naivety of a newborn. He protected Liyue, watched over its people through uncountable sun rises and falls, for it was his duty, an unbreakable contract set in stone, carved in his soul like the fierce markings on the monuments of Liyue.
He was content, Xiao supposed. He killed, fought, and took solace in the occasional trips to a certain inn situated in Dihua Marsh.
Yet, Xiao had never felt true freedom. He was free, he had been since the day Rex Lapis unchained him from the shackles that were his past, but somehow, he still felt trapped.
Or perhaps it was he himself who never allowed himself to be free, encaged in a prison of his own terrors and gnawing nightmares.
It was with him, and only with him, did Xiao let himself be free. Like a fledgling soaring high above the sky, a newborn butterfly emerging from its cocoon, the world was reborn afresh in front of his very eyes. Wonderment and beauty seeped through the ragged scars of his past, completing him whole.
The world often seemed to move slower when they were together, time was solid, and gold. Xiao felt every passing moment sparkle, and he wished nothing more than to carefully store way each and every memory with Venti, a treasure trove of him. Every smile, every note sung, every look that made the Xiao's insides swarm with a million butterflies.
Xiao would follow Venti to the ends of the earth, until his last breath. This was something so peculiar even he himself could not explain; they were unbound of any legalities, any obligations, yet Xiao, again and again, found himself wishing to willingly place himself in Venti’s aid, to be his shield and spear. A gravitational pull that seemed to always lead him to a pair of glowing emerald eyes.
Like most things that were so painstakingly human and innately weak-natured, love did not come easy for Xiao, even now as he stumbled over the three simple words he had held in his heart for so long to the archon of the wind.
The gentle and delightful breeze of Mondstadt enveloped him like the hug of a long-lost friend. He felt warmth rising from the depth of his heart, melting away the wall of ice that had instilled in permanence since the beginning of time. The cloud of hatred and agony that shrouded his visions seemed to have temporarily faded away.
-
Xiao had always been told that there was no solution for his cursed fate, bound to him as karmic bonds of his haunted past. The inevitability of his tragic downfall was predetermined the moment he was given this name. Conqueror of Demons, like the sole purpose of his being; the exterminator of all evil, an emotionless weapon molded and executed to perfection.
Xiao had witnessed countless times with his very own eyes, what others of the shared destiny had succumbed to. There was no other way, he had always known that, though he never had any doubts nor regrets. If fulfilling this role was at the cost of his own measly existence, then so be it, he had no particular intention to stay.
That was, until he met him, the vivacious wind god who had stumbled into Xiao’s grey, dim-lit world like a bright beam of light punching through the clouded sky. A bold intruder that had now made themselves at home. Of the countless dreams that Xiao had consumed, this was the sweetest one yet.
-
You’re wrong, he wanted to say, wanted to track down every single person who pitied him and shout into their faces.
He wasn’t incurable, he wasn’t beyond saving.
Venti’s love, was his antidote, his salvation.
With him, he was fearless.
His fate, was yet to be determined.
-
Maybe for some, love was something grandiose, something flashing spectacular, with a charade of white doves in gothic cathedrals or freshly picked roses and handmade chocolates. But maybe for some, love lied in between shared glances across a room, stolen kisses behind forgotten library books, or the simple warmth of another’s close embrace under a skyful of starry stars.
Xiao still didn’t fully understand love, but he no longer troubled himself with the word. If love meant the faint flutters of butterfly wings in his heart every time Venti smiled at him, or the overwhelming urge to softly kiss away the lingering traces of worry and sorrow on his face. Then yes, he supposed, it existed, within him.
And every day with him, Xiao mused, as he glanced towards Venti merrily plucking away on his lyre whilst softly humming a nameless tune. Every day with him, he felt it growing a little more.
It took him a long time, but he was finally home.