Work Text:
There were three things the crown prince, Xiao, knew about you. And because he did, he thought you to be rather odd, and yet, at the same time, he found you absolutely intriguing.
One, you liked staying in the palace gardens. You had once told him how you adored the bed of glazed lilies and its fragrance. Though, you would also complain about its authenticity. You would speak as though you were an old hag—during my time, the blue in which they bloomed was purer than that of the springs of Liyue.
Or, something along those lines. He couldn’t exactly remember each specific word, but he remembered the pride on your face. The way your eyes sparkled as you finished speaking. You were silly, and the crown prince found himself not minding it one bit. Perhaps it was some form of subtle prejudice… but it was a secret only he would be privy to. He swore to take it to his grave.
You were funny. Not that he would ever admit that out loud. You spoke as if you were centuries older than him. The people of Liyue lived very, very long lives. Blessed with something akin to immortality, but not quite. But, his point was, he too, remembered how pure the blue of glazed lilies used to be. Of course, he would remember. Glazed lilies were his late mother’s flowers. They sprouted in her wake, blooming on the ground she stepped on. He grew up watching his mother tend to her precious flowers—in the very same palace gardens you have recently taken a liking to.
Nevertheless, the crown prince humoured you anyway.
“You know, when I was younger, glazed lilies used to be bluer than they are now.” You once told him.
The crown prince had long since deduced that you were younger than him. A century younger, if he were to roughly estimate. He knew what glazed lilies looked like as if they were the back of his hand, but he let you talk anyway.
He would let out a hum of acknowledgement, prompting you to continue on. But you don't, and he would always know why. He’d decide to play along, just this once, he would tell himself—and he would continue to tell himself that for the next hundred times.
“Oh?” He had asked, feigning intrigue.
He was almost certain that you were already aware of him and his memories with the said flower, but each time he would let you speak of all the things you knew—things that he, too, already knew by heart. How could he not? He was the crown prince. It was his duty to know these things.
The crown prince was expected to know all the things you spoke of, but he pretended not to because he got to see your face light up. That was enough for him—to keep on pretending. When your face lit up, it would make him feel warm inside. It was like apricity, seeing you smile. It was a smile that radiated joy, and if he were being honest, he felt your joy, too.
Like every other thing he was supposed to know, he knew you loved the palace gardens. And every time, without fail, he would find you waiting for him there. Thus, on one sunny Tuesday morning, he found you in the palace gardens. As always, you were crouching by the bed of glaze lilies—as if staring and squinting at them long enough would return them to their true colours.
“Hullo, your highness.” You would greet him with a clumsy bow once you'd noticed his presence behind you.
Routinely, he would respond with, “You do not have to call me that.”
“Then I would be one disrespectful subject,” You would click your tongue, shaking your pointer finger. “Dear archons, my parents did not raise such a brute.”
The crown prince would always find himself sighing at your antics, saying, “Not referring to me as such does not make you a disrespectful… person.”
“Oh,” You would say in a sing-song voice. “Is it because—”
But, before you could ever continue, he would always cut you off, saying, “That is not what I meant. You need not refer to me by my title because you are my friend.”
“Okay,” You would reply bashfully, and then you’d start to tell him things. You’d tell him about the things you’d learned—about the deep waters, the stars, and many others. You’d talk for an entire afternoon, and the crown prince would patiently listen to every word.
Because… there were three things the crown prince, Xiao, knew about you. And because he did, he would find himself roaming the palace grounds for you—all so he could help you.
Two, you were lost—and stuck, for the most part. You couldn’t tell him how or why, your memories failing you when you needed them most. The crown prince never doubted you, though. You were his friend; while that seemed to make him look like an utter fool, with his entire heart, he knew you were not here to cause him and the court trouble.
One moment you were somewhere else, and the next you found yourself in the palace—or so you told him. He could attest to that too, yes. He did not even know you. Not until he got to know you. Your face was not familiar, nor was your voice. Everything about you was new to him.
The crown prince has never seen you his entire life—ever—until he found you lost within the maze that was the palace. He could not remember one instance in all the centuries he’s lived in the palace where he’s received your acquaintance. He did not know you at all, rendering you a complete stranger to him. But you had looked so confused the first time he saw you, as though you didn’t even know why you were in there or how you got there.
And so, despite his better judgement, he asked if you were alright—well, not exactly asking if you were alright, but it was close enough.
“What are you doing?” He had asked you. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword, ready to unsheath it should you attack him. “Who are you?”
You had looked at him in distress. At that time, the crown prince thought it was the look of someone who was caught in the act of a crime, but now he realised it was as you had seemed. You were disgruntled, confused, and many other things he would dare not pry from you.
“I do not remember,” Was all you had to say about yourself at that time.
The crown prince concluded months later that it was true. You truly did not know your name or how you got there. You had told him you wanted to return home, wherever that might be.
He never truly understood what you meant by that, and he would not understand you for a very long time. How could someone who cannot remember where home was—or how home felt—long for home? How could you want to return home when you do not even remember where it was, or better yet, who it was?
Your sentiments were never questioned, though. He takes everything you say at face value, much to his own chagrin. He should never trust strangers, let alone ones who suddenly appear in the palace without much explanation. And yet, the crown prince trusts you because he listens.
He has heard how much you longed for a faraway place you could not recall. He believed you wanted to return, but you could not. You spoke with such fondness for a place that might not be real, and so, he believed you. He believed in the existence of your home in a faraway land and hoped one day, you’d find your way back.
“I want to go home,” You once told him meekly. “Do you think me to be silly, your highness? Longing for a home I do not remember?”
He shook his head then, in an attempt to reassure you. Your wishes were things anyone with a heart would wish for. Even for you, whose memories were like scattered puzzle pieces. You were allowed to wish for things beyond your reach.
“No, I don’t,” He remembers saying. “I think everyone is bound to long for home, even when they don’t seem to remember it.”
You hummed at his reply, “I wonder what it is like to return home. Do you think I have family waiting for my return? Will I even find my way back?”
The crown prince only shrugged and asked, “Is that what you truly want? To return to your home?”
You had told him it was what you wanted most—at least, what you could recall wanting most since the moment you found yourself lost in the palace. You said, “It feels empty to only have my memories in bits and pieces. There is this hole in my heart, and somehow, it tells me that all I need to fill it in is to find my home. I do not mind if looking for it takes an entire century. So long as I get to return home, then I suppose, that’s what matters most.”
He nods, understanding. He has listened to your yearning, and so had he listened to your dreams. All of which weren’t things that were so inconceivable. You were allowed to have your wishes granted and even fulfilled.
So he does the unthinkable. The crown prince made an oath to himself—and to you, by extension. You were his dear friend, and he swore an oath to always help you. He swore on his honour to bring you home, no matter how long it would take him.
After all, the people of Liyue lived very long lives. He had centuries ahead of him to fulfil your one and only dream. For his dearest friend, though it was unusual of him, he would search the ends of the world to return you home.
He does this all because there were three things the crown prince, Xiao, knew about you. He knew a truth that not many dwellers could ever fathom to understand. It was the key to getting you home—a hint to a puzzling mystery.
Three, the crown prince knew you were dead. It was something the both of you immediately acknowledged the first time you met. But, it was the one thing he could not bring himself to believe the first time around.
He refused to believe that he was seeing a ghost—that he was seeing you. Ghosts weren’t supposed to be real. They were stories parents used to scare their children into leaving the house after dark. And yet, there you were. Right before his eyes, a ghost with no memories.
“Is it so hard to believe?” You had asked him. Then, you took those words back. “Maybe it is. After all, I remember dying, but I do not remember anything before that. But also—your kind are descendants of the imperial dragons. Is it so hard to believe that ghosts may be real too?”
“There are no ghosts in the imperial palace,” The crown prince stubbornly insisted. “At least, there weren’t ghosts in the imperial palace. Why are you here?”
You do not know. That was the same answer you’d tell him time and again—you do not remember anything from your life before. You had told him that you could only remember hopping from place to place. As though there was something pulling you along.
Though you had told him you would never usually admit it, you went ahead and threw yourself under the carriage, saying, “It’s like I’m on some sort of leash. I keep getting dragged around. I haven’t a clue why.”
Your guess was right, he learns months later. You are tethered to something, and it was on the palace grounds. Whatever it was that anchored you in the world of the living needed to be buried, lest you never find your way back home.
The crown prince knew many things. From Liyue’s long and glorious history to spirits and ghosts. Admittedly, he only learned about the latter recently for you. He knew that whatever it was keeping you around was something brought in recently. After all, he had never seen you around until a couple of months ago.
Of course, he could still be wrong… and the crown prince, who never knew how to be selfish, wished there was a chance that he could be wrong. He finds himself with another secret he would take to his grave—he wants you to stay a little while longer.
“I have figured it out,” You had told him one particular afternoon. What exactly you had figured out, the crown prince did not know yet. You had a knack for pointing out the obvious—or at the very least, the obvious things he never seemed to take note of—as he had noticed. He wondered if that was the case this time around. “Whatever’s keeping me here arrived on the same day I appeared.”
That specific information, the crown prince already knew. It was just that; he just never told you that he did.
“You appeared six months ago,” He recalled.
He still remembers the first day he met you; witty, glowing, see-through, and dead. He remembers the first time he saw you pass through a wall as though it were nothing—and the first time you smiled at something that he said. He remembers every first and selfishly hopes there won’t ever have to be a last. But that was just wishful thinking.
“I appeared six months ago,” You repeated in confirmation. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”
The crown prince remembers the long pause after that. He remembers not knowing the right words to say but knowing what he wanted to tell you. He remembers every moment and every second—the silence that seemed so loud and the unspoken words that begged to be blurted out: he had already figured out what was keeping you within the palace walls.
It started with a random thought—a nonsensical memory.
Since the day you first laid eyes on the palace gardens, the crown prince has noticed how you gravitated towards a potted plant. A glazed lily that was different from all the others. One that remained in bloom in the mornings, and one that you would berate the most. Though flowers were not sentient, you had called it conceited—why must it be potted while the rest are together on the bed? What does it think it is, the emperor?
It was a fairly new addition, and he remembers the gardener mentioning that it was found blooming somewhere in the west of Liyue. It was a rare sight to have glazed lilies blooming in the west. The land in the west was not fertile enough to keep ancient flowers alive, and yet that lone glazed lily stood tall, full of life.
With its rarity, it was uprooted and brought to the palace as a gift—an offering to the late empress. The crown prince spent many months not finding interest in the lone flower. Having only glanced at it every now and then whenever you fumed. He did not care about glazed lilies since the empress had passed. He had no reason to care for a flower his mother had loved, not when she was no longer around.
But then there was you.
You had told him you hated the lone glazed lily. You hated how it was different—how it was alone when it could be somewhere with the others. But you understood why the flower must bloom in solitude. Because it was different, it suffered a lonely fate. The crown prince thought the flower was much like you.
“Why are you showing me this?” You had asked him as you stared the potted flower down as if glaring at it would make it disappear into thin air. “I do not like it. Can we not look at other flowers instead?’
“You know,” He began cryptically—it was unlike him, but some twisted and selfish part of him wanted to keep you here a little while longer. The crown prince was selfish, just this once, he swears. “My father once told me that we resent people and things when we see in them the parts of ourselves that we do not like.”
“I didn’t know you were into philosophy.”
“Because I am not.”
“Huh. Very well, then.”
“You do not sound like you believe me.”
“But I do,”
“Truly?”
You replied with a hum of agreement and a smile. The crown prince wonders then, how could something so beautiful make his heart ache so painfully? Maybe this was what the elders meant when they said that beauty will always come at a price. He gets to see a smile so ethereal, but at the cost of an odd feeling of heartache that he cannot begin to explain.
You hated the lone flower, and you would remind him of this every single time without fail. And yet, despite all your complaints and grievances, you would treat the flower as how one would treat a newborn child—delicately, and with love. Had the crown prince not known any better, he would have assumed that you’d taken a fondness for the flower. Perhaps you did, and your stubbornness stood in the way of admitting it.
You crouched down, just as you had told him you wanted to leave. You stayed, and your hands reached out to touch the flower instead. Your fingers do not pass through its petals; the flower moves, albeit slightly. It sways to your touch and to the breeze that suddenly blows—he watches you quietly, intently, as his mind races with a million and one words.
“I already know how to get you home,” The crown prince suddenly blurted out.
“You do?” You asked.
You did not seem elated as he had hoped you would. You had droned on for months on end about how much you longed for the home you could not remember, but why does your eyes not smile when he tells you this? Why do you remain stoic? Why won’t you jump around and squeal in delight? Have your wishes changed?
Slowly, he nodded and offered you his hand, “Walk with me?”
And you did. You walked with him, side by side, through the palace gardens that the both of you had memorised over the months he’s gotten to know you—at least, the you that he knows, who cannot remember a single thing about their past.
He takes you in circles, dragging this dreaded moment on. You did not complain and only sang a familiar tune he could not put a name to. A tune that reminded him so much of you—one of the many other things about you that he cannot put a name to. You were a familiar mystery, an unanswered prayer and question, one whose ending was coming soon.
You walked with him, and his hand brushed lightly against yours. But he was not so bold as to take it in his, to feel a nonexistent warmth that only his heart could fathom feeling. Archons, no.
“The flower…” Then he trailed off.
The crown prince was many things, but not once in all the centuries he’s lived has he considered himself to be selfish. You were a spirit tethered to a world you no longer belonged to, and as with all that has passed, you deserved to find peace. You deserved to have your soul set free from the mortal chains that bind you to an even more mortal world.
But he tells himself that the people of Liyue lived long lives. Wanting to keep you a while longer should not be an unforgivable sin.
“Is my way home,” You finished for him instead. You had spoken the words he could not get himself to tell you. His steps come to an abrupt stop, and then he gapes at you.
There was silence between you both, and all the prince could hear was the rustling of the leaves and the crunching of grass beneath his feet. He feels your presence, but he feels you fade away all the same. In that very moment, as you stared at him and he stared at you, he decided that you were a contradiction.
Before the silence became too much to bear, you spoke once more, “Why must I be attached to the one flower I despise the most?”
The pieces finally fall into place for the crown prince. You hated the flower because it was you. The flower was you, and it was the one thing that kept you tethered to the world you were unfairly yanked out of.
“Would you like the answer?” He asked.
“No.”
Your walk continues in silence. The silence did not make the crown prince want to run away this time around. In fact, it made him want to stay—and he does. He walks with you, leading you through the maze, through flower arches, past the ginkgo tree, and then back to where you began. Right in front of the potted glazed lily you hated.
“How does this work?” You asked softly. “Do you just throw it away? Destroy it?”
“No, that would erase your soul.” He replied. “We uproot it, I suppose?”
“Do you think the last of my remains are somewhere in its soil?”
“Likely.” He answered. “You’ll be home after all this.”
“So eager to get rid of me?” You teased. “Oh, my dear heart—here I thought you liked my presence!”
“Do you want to return home or not?” His question only hangs in the air.
You bit your lip, inspecting the potted flower, his question now forgotten. “But what if it doesn’t work, what happens then?”
It would work, and the crown prince was certain of that. He looked at you and noticed the hesitation in your eyes. Did you not want to return home?
Bits and pieces of what was supposed to have been apparent to him months ago flood the gates of his mind. You were hesitant because you had known all along. The moment you first touched the lone glaze lily, you already knew your story and your name.
He does not chastise you for this, instead, he reassures you.
“It will work,” He knows it will, and he has never been so certain… and much like you now, he wishes he wasn’t. He wished that somewhere in the order of things, something would fail, but the crown prince reminded himself, seemingly for the last time, that he wasn’t selfish.
The crown prince finds himself with a new secret.
There was one thing you never knew about Xiao, and you might never know about it—or maybe, you already knew. Whether you did or not was a secret you already took with you to your grave. He would no longer be able to ask, and you would never be able to tell.
A bittersweet ending to an equally bittersweet beginning. He was content this way, but still, Xiao loved you.
In the beautiful chaos of meeting, befriending, and loving a lost ghost, Xiao had found a home within you. While you had told him how much you yearned to return home, his selfish heart had built one through you. You were his home, and Xiao loved you. He loved you so much that he allowed his new-found home to crumble before his eyes. His home should not be home when you, in all that made you ethereal to him, were not free.
Xiao loved you, and so he set you free.
The lone glazed lily that you had once loathed no longer had to bloom in solitude; it finally found its way back home amongst the bed of familiar blues. No longer did it need to be conceited because the flower was you, and you were far from conceited. You were many things; cheeky, witty, bright, and a thousand other wonderful things—but never conceited. He would always remember you that way.
Xiao made it a habit to always pass by the palace gardens, at least once every morning. He’d watch your flower dance to the breeze, and it would leave the smallest smile on his face. Of course it would. You were Xiao’s chance encounter, the only one that could make him smile. He was sure to remember you for the millennia to come…
Because Xiao knew many things, but one he would never forget was that he loved you.