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You sat at the very edge of Starsnatch Cliff, like sitting on the tip of a knife and seeing when and how it would fall.
You looked at the view for one last time. There was no point in going back, now. Even though the night was shining and studded with stars, all you saw was the vast expanse of nothingness.
The night was so great, Celestia so grand, and Teyvat so immense. It wouldn’t matter if you disappeared, for the only ones who noticed were not ones you could go back to. Your family would not take you back like this, so broken, so defeated, and so marred by scars.
Five months ago, you fell into the Abyss. After fighting endlessly and despairingly for every scrap of life you could get, for ages and eons until the end of time, you made it out.
Fighting and continuing on even when you felt exhausted beyond your bones and weary beyond your years left you like this. There was no one to save you but yourself each time, and each time you questioned why you even tried to go on.
It left your body scarred, and your soul achingly empty.
The Abyss has cursed you with no life worth living, and has left you as a desecrated flower barely holding onto life.
And so, you would not. You had nothing and no one. Not anymore, and never again.
As you made to stand up, a stray tear made its way out of your left eye, and you stepped off of the edge and waited for oblivion to claim you.
But instead, you saw flashes of black light appear as a smaller hand caught yours.
The Conqueror of Demons had come for you, and saved you. You are sure you didn’t utter his name, not even in your mind, for you knew there was no saving you.
Xiao used his other hand to pull yours up. “Don’t treat your own life so carelessly, mortal.”
You could not care less. “There is nothing—more to life, than suffering needlessly,” you said, breath hitching. “Let me go, and we can both—” you struggled to breathe “—be done with this.”
Xiao gritted his teeth. “I won’t let you end your own life in such a way, human. What happens if you die? Do you think death is better than life?”
He pulled you up, his tiny frame carrying every ounce of strength he’d gained from eons fighting. You both collapsed on the edge of the cliff, panting.
You sat there, not caring about catching your breath. “Not existing should be better than existing,” you said simply. “So let death take me away from this accursed life instea—”
“—and you will be reborn again, and live this accursed life once more?” Xiao asked, cutting you off. “You will live, and you will suffer again. That is a part of life. Both you and I, we cannot escape it.”
Your smile turned coldly bitter. “And, pray tell, what in the world is all this suffering for?” Life was never fair to anyone, but especially not to you. “And why, for the love of Celestia, can't I live a free life like everyone else seems to do so, so easily?” Your voice broke on your last word.
Xiao looked away. “I don’t yet know,” he said very quietly. “Life has not been very kind to me, either.”
Your shoulders felt heavy. Both you and him knew the same kind of suffering, the kind where you would endure and endure and still endure some more, yet it never seemed to bear any fruit.
Xiao did not speak for a while. It was strange that the Yaksha had not left yet, strange that he would let himself be with you like this, but you welcomed it all the same. He felt so intimately familiar, as if you two were old friends reminiscing about your past. There was something in his eyes that gave you a striking sense of knowing. It was, as they called it in Fontaine, déjà vu, a fleeting moment of surging reminiscence.
He lifted his head, and your eyes met. Sharp eyes to piercing ones, and golden to golden.
Time seemed to still for a while, ungrounding your minds yet steadying your souls.
In his eyes, you saw everyone you'd ever known, and everyone you'd ever loved. You saw war, famine, plague, yet also power, solidness, and vulnerability.
His eyes widened a little, as if seeing the same in yours.
He’s too good to be true, your mind whispered. let’s keep ourselves safe, and turn him away, like we did to everyone else. You ignored that voice for the first time in a long age.
You felt your guards drop, and let your armor clatter to the ground. It felt like you were seeing him for the first time again, and even though you had been with him for only several minutes, it felt like an eternity. “How are you still alive?” you whispered to him, gentler this time. The words seemed to flow right out of your mouth, as rivers did. “It’s been thousands of years.” How did you do it? How did you find the will to stay alive? How did you win against yourself, again and again, time after time?
Xiao did not answer, and simply kept his eyes fixed upon a bird-shaped constellation in the night sky.
You did not push him. No answer was answer enough.
Eventually, he sighed, though not unkindly. “I do not usually speak to mortals like this, you know,” he said finally. “I feel as if I should keep a distance from myself and them. From you.”
“Then why haven't you done so, with me?”
“I do not yet know,” he said, “and I do not know where this peculiar sense of trust is coming from.” Xiao shifted, looking a bit uncomfortable. “At the moment you stepped off,” he said hesitantly, “I felt… pain, a sense of strife like nothing I have never experienced before, and I felt it as if it were my own. It is strange,” he said, tilting his head, “that I felt so compelled to patrol Starsnatch Cliff this evening, even though there are hardly any demons around here at all.”
You heard the whispers of fate in the wind. fate, fate, fate, it chanted soundlessly. it all leads to here. The wind usually never spoke, but it seemed that today was a rare exception. The wind usually spoke in riddles, and rarely was it ever so direct. You had an inkling that a certain Anemo Archon may have had something to do with this, and resolved to seek him out later.
You decided to test fate once more.
“Okay,” you said, standing up. You spread your arms out as if welcoming the sun. "Give me one sentence as to why I should continue on with this life.” You were past the initial wave of despair that had spurred you to end your life, and did not feel the hopelessness as much anymore. Although you were not fully out yet, you were out of the deepest depths of it.
However, you still felt a strange sense of trust in the cosmos that Xiao would say the exact right words that you needed anyways. Even now, maybe a small, hidden part of you wanted to be saved. Craved being saved. And was tired of saving yourself all the damn time.
Xiao didn’t hesitate. "To exist is to be worth everything, and to be worth everything is to worthy of anything. As long as you are alive, you will find a reason to live again.” As soon as the words left his lips, he seemed a little taken aback by what he had said, his cheeks colouring his face with a beautiful shade of rose.
His words rang true. Xiao's words were like a key to a lock you didn't know you carried all this time. Warmth radiated in every inch of your being, warming up the long-forgotten fireplace within. You smiled a genuine smile for the first time in decades, like the first snowflakes melting in spring. The layers upon layers of snow were still thick and still very much there, but the sun was also there now. Maybe one day, the sunlight would even touch grass.
The reverie ended suddenly. You scowled internally. Since when was your inner monologue so optimistic?
let it be, whispered the wind. fine, you whispered right back.
But after all your years of suffering, something finally did make sense and clicked into place. It was the answer you’d prayed for all along, thinking that it would never reach Celestia. It felt like a pair of rusty metal gears, long abandoned, but now finally coming into place and turning towards each other in the right way, at the right time.
Xiao smiled back, reluctant. His smile was something so small, barely there, but there all the same. “I have not spoken like this since I was a child,” he said softly, uncrossing his arms for perhaps the first time in a thousand years. “Just who are you?”
You smiled gently, already knowing the answer. “A constellation beside yours.”
You pointed at the sky. There it was, a bird-shaped constellation beside another.
He looked up, then gave you a questioning look. “What is it called?”
“Aquila Volans,” you say. “The Flying Eagle.”
“Hm,” Xiao murmured, “how interesting. And beside yours is Alatus Nemeseos, the Winged Nemesis of my own constellation. The coincidences in this universe never cease to astound me.”
nothing is coincidence , the wind whispered in your ear. fly high, the both of you. you are together now, after so many lives. you have known low, so you can know high, and you two have known the lowest, so you can know the highest.
higher than everyone else? you ask the wind. yes, the wind whispered to you one last time.
You held out your hand for him to take. “Will you allow me to conquer demons by your side for all eons to come?”
Xiao took your hand, but shook his head. “No. This is something that I must carry alone, but it is no fault of yours. However, you are merely mortal. How will you even live for the eons to come?”
You smiled again. “I am a descendant of an early Archon, though distantly. I cannot die unless I wish to die, and I can live for thousands of years if nothing outside of old age kills me. Earlier, if you had not saved me, I would have died.”
Xiao’s gaze turned serious, more like his usual self. “Do not do that again,” he said sharply, “The pain I felt before you fell, it was,” he inhaled slowly, “of the sort of agony unimaginable to many mortals. Swear to me that you will not do it again.”
You met his eyes. “I cannot promise I will not want to, but I can swear that I will not try to. Fair enough?”
Xiao’s shoulders relaxed again. “Yes. More than fair enough.”
He put his mask back on, feeling safe to leave upon making sure that you would not harm yourself. You were hesitant to let him go, and caught his hand before he could disappear entirely. "Come watch the sunrise with me," you say gently.
Xiao hesitated, reluctant to abandon his duties, but sat down beside you all the same. You started to give him a sunsettia, then took it back upon remembering from somewhere long ago that he preferred almond tofu. You were surprised when he ate it anyways.
In the silence between you two, there were infinite things unspoken, that never needed to be spoken. You two did not need anything other than each other's existence, even if one was not present in the other's life.
The sun rose up, breaking out of the coverings of night and the tapestry of constellations. Your winged birds in the sky faded into illumination, but you trusted they would still be there together night after night, for the countless eons ahead of you both.
There was a song your soul knew that had been long buried underneath the ages, that was now resurfacing like a tide. And, at long last, you hummed to its eternal tune.
And the rain, it washes away all the pain, because it feels like the sound of your voice.
The melody carried through your soul like a river flowing through a thousand-year dam.
The flora surrounding you both held little droplets of dew, making the leaves shine like the stars.
And I’m comforted by the sweet smells of dew, a voice in your head sang to you, because the sunrise reminds me of you.
You turned your head to see him already looking at you, the sun in his eyes.
And you hung the moon in yours.
He smiled faintly, as if he had forgotten how to do so. But you remembered, and he looked away like the sun was blinding him, as if he were not the exact reason you remembered.
And with this moment, a single, fleeting thought came from a voice within, who was so much older than your own.
I hope we can stay together, this time around.
The more you tuned into it, the more it came like a rising tide, until it was flooding your mind completely.
You're never truly gone, as long as a part of you in me lives on. I'll always find you, again and again. Ceaselessly, endlessly, forever and always again.
You let it come, bringing forth a surge of long-forgotten voices, songs, and memories.
Why do I have to lose you like this every time?, he'd cried while holding you in his arms on the battlefield. Stay with me, damnit!
My love, come here, you'd smiled for the first time while holding out your hands, I'll hold you close, so don't worry.
How ironic that, after all this time, we meet like this, he'd said while meeting you on the other side of war. Yes, you'd replied, of course fate would tempt us like this, only to give us nothing.
You were pulled out of the ocean of memories by Xiao shifting around, unsure and uncertain. He conjured a crystalfly out of thin air, with bright embers suspended in wind, then falling away slowly.
You tilted your head in mild questioning. Your heart skipped a beat (something that felt oddly familiar to your heart) as he leaned towards you and put the bright crystalfly in your hair, adjusting the angle several times before he found one that was satisfactory. He nodded, then turned a bit as if to move away, although looking reluctant to do so.
Do it, do it now, a voice from one of your past lifetimes urged, or you might never get another chance, ever again.
Xiao, as if mesmerized by a voice from his own soul, gave you a hesitant look, wanting to see if you were indeed thinking the same thing.
And you were, nodding with your eyes bright like the auroras. That was all it took for Xiao to lean his head, slowly at first, then with his lips meeting yours with an earnest touch, all while gazing at you intensely as if some unknown part of him had missed this for so long. It was the two golden gears of fate, finally aligning and turning in time with each other.
After centuries of struggle and separation, you were finally, finally here. Xiao pressed forward with a new sense of urgency, losing a little of his composure as you fell on your back and he was on top of you, desiring to know more of you, wanting to relearn your heart and soul.
You both started to roll down the hill slowly, cradling each other in your arms, then spinning faster and faster with his hand protecting your head, until you both landed at the bottom of the cliff. You held your arms wide open, outstretched and welcoming the new sun.
You looked at him as he looked at the sun. Do you think we could grow old together, while staying as children this time?
After so much tragedy, you were finally coming together for your true ending, because the true ending is always beautiful. If an ending is not bright like this, then it is never the true end.
“Is there anywhere I can find you again?” You hear yourself ask.
“Yes,” Xiao said softly, “you can find me at Wangshu Inn. Find me in the last hours before the sunrise, when the constellations are highest in the sky.” He stood up slowly, reluctant to leave, then summoned his Jade Spear and mask, for he could never abandon his duties for long. You knew you could never alleviate his karmic debt, never take away his pain, but that never meant you would ever stop trying.
And in a whirlwind of shadow, he was gone. You watched the last embers of his darkness falling to you, remnants of him staying with you.
You sat up to watch the sun climb higher in the sky, shining down on all your worries, and pondered the new meaning of your life while feeling the rays of the sun kiss your skin.
If life could be like this, then you would stay. If life was like this, then you would live it to its fullest.
Just because I have not seen the sun in years, does not mean it ever ceased to exist, after all.
Archons, how could you forget? The world was so much more than just suffering, bore so much more than just strife. The Glaze Lilies that bloomed only when you sung to them, the sweet flowers that could be delicious with anything, and the ethereal, beautiful caves of Sal Terrae and its glowy ponds.
You have not seen the sun in a long, long time, and eventually forgot that you were the sun.
As you took a sunsettia out of your pocket and slowly ate, you heard a quiet voice from the deepest depths of your soul that was so gentle, it was almost silent.
I missed you so much.
You knew the voice was talking about him, but somehow, you also knew it was talking about you.
Welcome home.