Chapter Text
You had never intended to push yourself this far. Pain burned white-hot in your chest.
Your ability to see the dead had always been something you considered a curse. Even as a child, the cries of the spirits who clung to the living terrified you. Not all of them were human but you found them all equally pitiful. Many often wandered aimlessly, unable to pass because of lingering regrets or attachments from when they were alive.
As you got older, you had learnt that you could help them pass on, but at the expense of your own life. It was an exhausting task so you tried to limit how often you did it but it always hurt you to see small spirit children chasing after their parents, not understanding why their cries went unheard.
You had always considered your ability a curse. And you had always considered it one until you had met Xiao. The same Xiao who you had thought of as detached and indifferent. The very same Xiao who now held your shaking body in his arms, his face so uncharacteristically washed with worry.
“Does it hurt?” His voice was strained.
Hurt? Oh, right.
You had initially intended to erase some of the spirits that clung to him. When he first caught your eye, you almost hadn't believed it. The festering miasma that hung over him was so impossibly large you wondered how he functioned. Spirits couldn’t hurt the living, per say, but if enough of them amassed, they’d begin to manifest as physical ailments. It was for this reason too that it hurt to disperse them — you were taking on the weight of their attachments and a human body could only hold so much. There were many times where you erased one too many spirits and fell extremely ill for weeks after.
“I—I’m okay,” you managed to answer. You were not okay.
Somewhere along the line, your initial intentions to disperse the spirits faded into something else. Xiao had once made a comment about how having you around lessened the pain of his karmic debt. You hadn't fully understood but something had clicked in you then. Perhaps the thing that had been a curse to you was a glimpse at salvation for others. You had wanted to help him.
“You don’t seem okay.”
He still had you in his arms when you coughed. Pain began to bloom in other parts of your body. Your fingertips burned as you clutched at your chest. It really hurt.
You looked up at him and tried to muster a smile. He didn’t buy it. He understood you got sick often but something about it felt different this time.
“What can I do? Did you take your medicine?” he asked.
You felt guilty at that question. When you learnt that Xiao was inwardly a considerate and self-sacrificing person, you knew he wouldn’t have let you help if he had found out the truth. Even if someone could lessen his pain, he would've never let them do it at the expense of their own life.
So, you had lied. You never once mentioned that you could see spirits, let alone erase them. You told him you had a weak body and sickness was just a constant you had accepted — an excuse you used often when you realised helping a demonic spirit pass on exhausted you far more than a human one. The medicine had just been another lie; you would take it, but you knew it really had no effect.
Xiao had actually been cautious at first. How could your presence lift the pain he had been fighting to keep at bay for eons? It was a coincidence that seemed far too good to be true and he would have been more adamant in finding out the truth, but the relief from the pain that you provided was comforting and comfort was dangerously intoxicating. Whenever he brought up how it hurt less around you, you’d laugh and joke that maybe you’d scared the karmic debt away.
“Yeah. I took some this morni—”
You suddenly cried out as pain shot up your arm. It felt as if someone had split open the flesh with a knife. At that, Xiao shifted his position in an attempt to make you more comfortable, his eyebrows deeply furrowed.
“Something else is wrong,” he pointed out. “Does it just hurt here?”
He was holding your arm and you were about to answer him when you felt something rise up in your throat. Ignoring the protest of your aching body, you turned over to grab an empty bowl. Luckily, your room at Wangshu had an abundance, privy to your habit of throwing up your guts. Nauseating, but in your defence, it only happened when you erased the spirits clouding Xiao.
As you heaved, Xiao held your hair back, his other hand rubbing the small of your back. Just as you thought you finished, you coughed violently.
And slowly, crimson began to drip from your mouth.
It mixed in grotesquely with the puddle in the bowl.
Xiao’s hand stopped moving on your back.
Maybe you had pushed yourself too far this time.
Black stars flickered in your vision and the last thing you saw was the terror on Xiao’s face as he caught your falling head.