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In forty days, Xiao will find himself in the soggy waters of Dihua Marsh, face slick with blood and nails chipped away. His weapon will slip between his fingers and fall into the water, and he will fall with it.
Forty days before this, he knows it will happen. It is a bittersweet acceptance, a quiet admission. Everything he has ever wanted in a demise.
You have forty days, Xiao. What will you do?
Xiao has never been one to postpone the inevitable. He has known that this has been coming for a very long time. It is the path of nature for destructive things like him to succumb to the consequences of their habits. Xiao does not blame himself. This is the fate that had been granted to him ever since his assignment as a yaksha. The centuries of karmic debt had become a numb pain at the back of his skull, and now he will go down in the ashes of his title.
He spends the first week with the Anemo Archon, but he is an archon no longer. When Xiao calls to him, “Barbatos,” he gives the yaksha a kind smile and tells him that his name is Venti, now.
It feels familiar. The granting of a new name, the start of a new identity. Xiao smiles back at him as gently as he can muster. He hopes that Venti, this new person, this bard, this vision holder, will live a very sweet life. Something simple, and kind.
The night is warm, and the air clings to Xiao’s skin with sticky humidity. He lays his head in Venti’s lap and lets his breathing slow into a gentle lull as the bard braids Xiao’s hair. The tugging of strands from his scalp reminds him that this moment is real and raw, and that it will end once he looks away. When Venti leaves on the last day, he presses a firm kiss to Xiao's temple and gives him a sad smile before disappearing in a flurry of feathers.
In the second week, he visits Morax. Morax, who is now Zhongli, and who is more human than archon. He lives with someone else now, a lover of sorts. Xiao finds it odd that someone who held so much power for centuries could be so content with submitting themselves to a quiet, quaint life (or, as quiet and quaint as life could get with a Fatui harbinger for a fiancee). But he does not blame Zhongli for choosing this path. Xiao is sure that if he had the option to do the same, he surely would.
Xiao walks into Liyue Harbor, a place he has always avoided walking into, and visits Zhongli in his home. They drink tea together, and Childe offers Xiao a warm smile with a serving of warm soup, and Xiao feels nauseous at how welcoming everything is.
Zhongli must know, yes--there is a wise glint in his eyes that does not fade when Childe leaves the room to let the two converse. It is bittersweet, everything about this is. But the gentleness in Zhongli’s expression makes the crawling feeling in his stomach fade away for just a moment.
“My end is coming,” Xiao tells the former archon, hands shaky as they grasp the still-full cup of tea. “It was-- It was inevitable, I believe. It will not stop for anything.” A pause, and, “I do not plan to stop it.”
Zhongli understands. He understands very well, and that makes Xiao hate this even more. Morax, who is now just a man, was once a god. Once held power in the point of his polearm and an entire nation in his hands. And now, he is human, of his own volition. He has resigned a millennia of godhood willingly, just to be free from the burden of those responsibilities.
Zhongli is strikingly human, in his desires and in his actions. Xiao envies it, almost.
“I have medicine for you,” he tells Xiao, a distant sort of look in his eyes as he stares into his cup of tea. “It will help. Not to stop it, just to… make it easier for you. Please take it. That is my one wish.”
Xiao agrees, and he does so easily. There is no use in arguing, not now. The rest of the evening is spent with Zhongli and Childe, talking idly over tea and the takeout that Childe left to pick up at one point in the day. Xiao does not eat much, he never does, but there is a sweetness in everything he bites into that makes it all the more bearable.
The rest of his time is spent scattered around Liyue. He completes his tasks as normal, and fulfills the responsibilities that have not yet been lifted from his shoulders. In the deep hours of the night, he returns to Wangshu Inn, where Verr Goldet still stands awake at the reception desk.
She calls him over once he appears, and tells him that a green-clad bard from Mondstadt had stopped by to leave him a gift. It is a flute, made of purple bamboo and decorated with a deep red tassel. It dangles off the end of the flute, and the edges of the threads are fraying, well-loved. Xiao holds the instrument with gentle hands, as gentle as the hands of a yaksha can get, and Verr Goldet lets him collect his composure before speaking.
“Thank you,” he tells her, even if she was not the one to procure the gift in the first place. “I’m…” and here is Xiao, clumsy with words again, “thank you for everything. And for keeping me here.”
The words are kind, and so unlike Xiao that the woman in front of him blinks for a moment before laughing in shock. “Of course, Xiao. You’re always welcome.”
Xiao doesn't want to admit it, but there are tears building up behind his eyes. This is weakness, a human sort of weakness, but he still glances back up at Verr Goldet with glassy eyes. He gives her a nod, and leaves to go back upstairs, bamboo flute still gripped loosely between his fingers.
And on the last night, the last night--the last night of forty nights. Xiao finds himself at Dihua Marsh. He sits atop a rock, overlooking the cool blue waters. The night is not quiet, not at all. The buzz of insects rings in Xiao’s ears and the feeling of his feet tapping against the stone echoes through his spine.
The flute lays in his lap, a heavy reminder of someone, somewhere. And Xiao picks it up, slides his fingers over the holes in the flute, and he plays a song. Something sweet and yearning and mournful. And he plays, and drags his fingers against the dark bamboo, and lets the pain in his lungs grow and grow and grow.
The night is not quiet. No, not at all, but when he loses his grip on his flute and lets it tumble to the ground, and walks to the water, and dips in his bare feet as a last attempt to cleanse himself of his sins, the insects go still, and the thumping in his head goes quiet, and he is finally calm.