Chapter Text
They are in a dimension of Aether’s creation, a realm without form, only writhing shadows absorbing every bit of light that isn’t Aether himself. They dance, they do not writhe, Aether says often, when he catches that faraway look in Xiao’s eyes, the sharp reminder of the karmic manifestations in his own mind. This is no prison, Xiao, and the shadows are no people. We are the only beings here.
Still, even the impossible realm of shadows is made beautiful by Aether, who lies on the moving forms, golden hair splayed out beneath his head like a halo, his arresting, entrancing gaze on Xiao. He remembers thinking, when Aether first looked at him, fearless and like he meant every word that left his lips, every expression of genuine interest in Xiao, that his eyes were like the ocean. Inky black and deep past his capacity to swim, and yet, when Aether held out his hand, skin warmer than any fire Xiao had lit in his life, he knew, doubtless, that he would follow those eyes till the ends of the Earth if only to see his own reflected back in them each time.
Around them, the shadows writhe, no, dance, incorporeal formless things that dare not dim Aether’s exalting glow. There is a quiet calm in this place, something utterly detached of all things true of Tevyat. There is no anger, no sorrow, but nor anything Xiao recognises as joy either, in these beings, they are only present, like shields from everything outside them. Here, Xiao recognises, even his karmic debt cannot follow. He is sure, from that alone, that Aether has made or modified this place for him and him alone. And he wonders, as he always does when he stares into the abyss in Aether’s unending eyes, why he has been chosen. What he can do to ensure it will never be a decision unmade. Xiao has fallen too far, he knows, now, he cannot endure suffering as before without Aether’s warmth, his words, his touch, to guide Xiao through it. Something in him is changed irrevocably. He does not know how not to be cautious of it.
“You are doubting me,” Aether says, unprompted as he looks at Xiao with those all-seeing eyes that lay Xiao’s every emotion bare each time. Yet, there is no regret nor judgement in the upturned corner of Aether’s lips, only mirth.
“I only wonder what will become of me when we are parted,” Xiao responds. “Whether by death or your own choosing.”
Aether’s laugh is light and lilting. “You say it as though it were inevitable.”
“Such things are mortal inevitabilities, Aether.” Xiao’s voice does not betray him, but it does not matter when Aether can read him like an open book, judging impossible tells Xiao himself does not know.
“Mortal? Perhaps I was, once, but that time is long past.”
Aether turns on his side to lean into Xiao’s chest, smooth, gloved hands trailing over green-tattooed, cold skin, and entraps him in that entrancing, siren-like gaze, drawing Xiao in and blinding him to the warning that lies in his tongue.
“I know your sins, shall I tell you of mine?”
There is something dark and bitter in his voice, his eyes a void of black, and what Xiao sees in them reminds him again that somewhere beneath Aether’s surface lies something that is not quite human at all. He is sure, now, that whatever Aether says is bound to tip the scales, make it impossible to deny his true nature any longer.
The question is asking whether he will accept something irreversible. Xiao, though he feels as though he is already drowning, still wades in the shallows. It is a demand to be certain, will you regret it if you learn something you cannot forgive?
“Yes,” Xiao says, because there is nothing he will deny Aether, not his forgiveness nor love.
Aether shuts his eyes, as though he is painting the scenes onto his closed eyelids as he speaks.
“My home did not have Gods. Not like your archons, at least. We had divinity, immutable, absolute beings without humanity nor consciousness, things that did not have the capacity to be kind nor cruel. My sister and I were their prophets, their divine messiahs. Our people called us wish-granters, holy, blessed creatures who could wield the power of the absolute universe with the humanity to be kind. We were no such thing, and we knew from the very start what our so-called ‘impossible gifts’ truly were.”
“So you could not grant their wishes?” Xiao asks, but there is a part of him that already thinks he knows.
“No, we had little trouble giving them what they asked, in exact. But we weren’t wish-granters, we only knew the natural balance of the world, that pendulum which swung unalterable. We only controlled just how high the pendant went. We could not give without taking in equal.”
Aether pauses, opening his eyes suddenly and meeting Xiao’s gaze. “And what our people demanded of us was no little matter.”
Xiao doesn’t know. How does one reconcile the person who has loved you immeasurably and undeservingly with he who has taken countless lives? How does he reconcile that sin stains him, makes him unworthy and undeserving, with the fact that Aether, who neither is nor should be any of those things, has done things perhaps as bad, perhaps worse?
“Where are we, Aether?” Xiao finally asks. The shadow realm has not changed, he has been here so many times before, but he has never before seen fit to ask. He has always known, deep down, that each time he took Aether’s hand with closed eyes and let him lead them through pockets of space and time, that they left Tevyat behind.
Aether smiles, but there is no mistaking the grave sorrow in it now. “This is my people’s home. They dance now because there must be some good, some alleviation after their suffering, just as there was good before, and suffering before it. But these shades have no consciousness, unlike us, their cycle ends with their lives. I am not made immortal of any God’s will, it is my own foolish doing that will keep me from joining my sister and my people in this realm. There are my two parallel lines, my own balance, the inherent hell of eternity underlying everything good in this world.
When Xiao does not speak, Aether continues. “This is the pattern of your world too, but not the law. Your karmic debt cannot touch you here so long as it is with you in Tevyat, and I could exchange that, but not without a greater sacrifice, a greater suffering.”
And things click into place. Xiao, the long-suffering Yaksha, he has not known alleviation from pain of any kind in millenia. This is it, isn’t it? Balance, a requisite disguised as an angel. He is the good in Xiao’s unending cycle of time, like a bandage to a wound, removed when the blood stops flowing. Unless the bandage becomes a poison, and the wound opened anew. Perhaps they, too, will dance like the shadows.
Aether’s skin is suddenly cold against Xiao’s. His delicate features look sharpened as a knife, his hair suddenly a net fish thrash against to free themselves from underwater. He is no human at all, in this moment, but a foreign God in its full.
“So, what is your decision, Adeptus Xiao?”
It is as easy as breathing to speak his name aloud.