Chapter Text
Xiao dreams of happy days. Days spent laughing with family, sprinting through creeks and smiling so wide that it ached. Xiao’s dreams are bright, beautiful. Happier.
He dreams of small smiles, of secrets kept between two best friends and of artist’s gloves and of saying goodbye to what was his first childhood crush.
He dreams, and they were warm.
.
.
.
That... was from a very long time ago. So long ago that he did not even know his own name. When memories were so blurry and well-loved that not even the bruises and cuts could dull the warmth.
The worst of it all started with a frosty night, with his... parents(?) in the rooms across from his. So close, so far.
(The Vigilant Yaksha had no parents, had no presences except for his own during his birth, Something is wrong.)
Xiao goes to bed, one night, and wakes up cold. Colder than cold, a rumbling so deep that it felt as though the earth was falling. it’s almost like death has brushed its thin fingers against his body. An unnervingly silent intruder, sliding through the empty halls.
Xiao stays awake for the rest of the night. He does not let himself rest until he’s sure that whatever creature had let itself in would not open his door. As the hours pass, he feels the silent chokehold grow tighter, clinging harder and harder until each breath is a struggle in his childish panic.
He is young. He is terrified. Time floats by with soft ticking, hours passing before he knows. The display of his clock shows the simple numbers, four-thirty-two. His eyelids slowly drift closer and closer, and... he falls asleep before he understands what has happened, a dawning horror settling onto his shoulders the second that he closes his eyes.
His eyes shoot open, and he is not in his room. In the kitchen, staring into the sink as it drips water from the faucet. The water gleams under moonlight, each drop of water working to build enough to mirror his reflection, showing him his soft brown eyes (what?) and the hunching monstrosity just behind him. Xiao jerks, twisting to glimpse upon its eroded scales. The beast has amber eyes, narrowed with some misplaced sense of fury underneath the light. They’re beautiful, in some strange way. Xiao does not see their beauty. He only sees the eyes of a monster, (he is not a monster. he is a savior) so he runs. Sprints away, vaguely hearing the skittering and clacking of too-long claws on tile.
He runs, out of his home’s door, straight towards the creek just under a small bridge that is so suddenly there. Wearing nothing but his nightclothes and a sweater, he freezes. Even in the muggy weather with the sunlight pouring through the trees, it is cold.
His nightmare persists even through that, feeling more and more real as the time goes on. He spends ages staring into the water, hoping that whatever he will see in his reflection is happier. In a faraway place, maybe.
The water under his gaze ripples, with each circle expanding outwards to expose his deepest, darkest secrets.
The world goes silent.
He startled, because his reflection had yellow eyes, like that of a predator. Slit pupils, narrowed and confused.
They feel like a part of himself, something left deep within his mind to be forgotten.
Something old.
Xiao’s breath stutters, eyes closing with the childish hope that, if he does not see, it will go back to normal. Hope that closing his eyes will force him to forget the truth that has lingered for a millennia that his eye cannot see.
Xiao has always been a fool.
Talons scrape against the metallic grates of the small bridge. Primal fear wells up within his throat, tears at the back of his ribs with a desperation he has never felt. Like a beast within a cage, imaginary claws rake at his ribs.
Heavy breathing, hissed through an elongated jaw. Teeth, long and thin and chillingly close to his body.
He does not remember opening his eyes.
Amber eyes, ferocious and... despairing, stare into his soul. Agonizingly silent compared to the once-loud breaths.
(... this isn’t right. where am i?)
The eyes close. Resigned, disappointed.
Shaking breaths make their way out of his mouth, clouds of foggy mist evaporating in the air.
His eyes close once again, and the nightmare falls away. The dream becomes a memory that he won’t remember, that will be lurking deep within— waiting for the day that he finally wakes up.
.
.
Years pass. Years of dreaming about something that didn’t happen and amber eyes, pooling with a honeyed form of grief that Xiao cannot name. He’s older, but those dreams...
They keep appearing. Flashes of molten amber eyes searing into his retinas, an aching pain deep in his bones. They’ve never disappeared, despite taking several medications and trying hundreds of methods.
Liyue is lively. Unaffected by the somewhat recent loss of their archon, however long two-hundred years may seem to the mortal mind.
Life continues. His eyes are not yellow, and the idea that they may ever be is, perhaps, something best left forgotten.
.
.
... Amber eyes stare into his soul from the edge of his bed. Claws, talons, over-arching horns that curl from the monster’s skull, they frame the focused gaze uncannily. (A monster shouldn’t look so... human. What am I missing?)
The moment that his reflection wavers, the second that he is able to look away from the mirror within his closet, Xiao closes his eyes. He thinks of fire ripping through his chest, scraping at his ribs until all that remains is ashes and coal. The lines on his wrist— the marks that he’d tried to escape the world and failed— sting with a vengeance. It’s been years and they still feel raw, aching and searing.
Xiao considers himself strong-willed, but beneath those eyes, that searching gaze, he is nothing more than a slave to be culled. Stolen away in the night, forgotten like the breeze. As if his very existence mattered just as much as dust under that regal and archaic presence.
Xiao was only a child, back then. Barely able to fight, barely able to shriek. Back then, his name was stolen away, clutched in the claws of that beast as though his defining name was the pearl of a great, slithering dragon.
(Not right, not right. His name was not stolen. It was willfully forgotten, as a mark that he was in a happier place.
Something is wrong. Deeply, unforgettably wrong.)
His name was... his name was something. Something that he didn’t have the capacity to remember. Something that he couldn’t bear to see the memory of.
(Stop. You know your name. Both of them.
Why can’t you remember?)
The monster scratches at the wooden frame, almost enticingly asking him to look. To see something that will never go away. Xiao does not look. He does not see the agonizing, dulled hope in the thing’s eyes, does not hear the whining and the pain of the beast just below his all too human senses.
Rough scales, jagged and dull from too many years spent hunting without rest, regal elegance no longer maintained by one that had curled through the sky with the smoothness of a ribbon. Once a proud mane, turned into something clouded with dirt and blood. Matted in places, knotted in others.
In other words, the archaic beast is no longer an elegant serpent. Now, he is...
What is he? A monster, he is not. A nightmare, unthinkable.
What is he? What am I missing?
Xiao... cannot think. As though there is a forced block on his thoughts, an aching pressed so deep that it was forgotten.
Xiao does not know a lot of things, or understand some others. This is a flaw of his, despite his intelligence.
The talons scrape against the edge of his bed’s frame once again, the muscle memory deep in his soul itself begging him to kneel. To howl his apologies, to beg for a forgiveness that would’ve been given with an ease that astounded him still.
Xiao does not bow. The talons click and gnaw at the wood, but never grow angry.
Xiao lets himself fall asleep, this time. The ache in the back of his mind is already forgotten, covered in the blissful edges of his exhaustion.
Xiao sleeps, and the creature beneath his bed sleeps as well.
.
.
.
(Why?
Who are you? Why are you... inside of me?
. . .
I am the Vigilant Yaksha, Conquerer of Demons. You—
— do not know who I am.
... This is not my body. Didn’t I die?)