Chapter Text
Time had a way of slipping through Xiao's grasp. In the centuries since he'd been sealed away within the Chasm, the world had transformed, yet he remained like no time passing at all.
The morning had dawned crisp and clear, a perfect day after the tumultuous last few days. As much as the world had changed during his absence, just as much had stayed the same. Humans marked the passing of time with their festivals and celebrations, and generations came and went one after the next. Xiao’d seen it all before.
He watched the workers at the quay unloading a shipment from Sumeru — from time to time he was given nervous looks, one or two workers elbowing each other and whisperingly pointing him out atop the crane.
Xiao cared not for their thoughts, as much as he was here to pass the time. He breathed in the saltwater scent, listening to the heavy boots walking to and fro on the quay. In the Chasm, time had seemed to lie still, until he’d needed use of measuring it again; Chongyun had shattered the stillness and restarted the wheel with his presence, a day beginning and ending with his arrival and departure and the night belonging to Xiao yearning for his return.
Here, outside, time was moving ever so fast. The sun was moving across the sky while people were busy. The ship was loaded again and sent out. Another ship anchored and the process repeated. Xiao moved down the crane.
Someone grabbed onto his sleeve. He stiffened, turning around and having to lower his gaze to meet their eyes. The inquiring eyes of a girl no older than ten stared back.
“Are you a demon, Mister?”
…a demon.
That was— Xiao looked around, trying to find this child’s guardian or parents. Some of the adults passing had stopped to stare more glaringly now. Their stares were like little pinpricks on his skin. He turned back to the girl.
“I’m not a demon,” he said, his voice like the whispering of paper. There were two other children behind her. Xiao crouched a bit, maybe he would look less threatening to them if he did. She didn’t seem afraid though, just curious. She had, after all, hindered him from walking away.
“I told you, Meng!” One of the boys said, crossing his arms and huffing like a proud bird. His voice was as loud as one too.
They were kind of… adorable. Xiao watched them bicker, helpless if he should say something or not. “Well! You were scared to ask the Mister, so I did it for you.” The girl defended her actions.
“Xiao?” At that voice, his head snapped up.
Morax — ah, no, he should call him Zhongli now — looked entertained, his gloved hands folded behind his back, for all appearances human. The children wouldn’t walk up to him and ask him if he was a demon.
Xiao, self-consciously aware of his remaining traits from having been consumed by karma for so long, swallowed the lump in his throat. “Zhongli.”
Zhongli observed the children, a faint smile on his face. “I see you’re making friends.”
"They... asked if I was a demon," Xiao said. Little Meng murmured an apology. Xiao tilted his head, looking at her. “You were curious. Apologies are unnecessary.”
She put her hands behind her back, toeing the ground with her shoe. Xiao tried to clarify, “I wasn’t offended.”
Zhongli chuckled. Xiao could feel his ears flush and hoped it was hidden by his hair. The children started another round of hushed bickering, as capricious as the wind in their moods.
He watched as his lord easily herded the three children, entertaining them for a short while, before sending them off to their parents. An ease that came from centuries spent walking among them, and that Xiao knew he himself had not, and would never have.
Xiao looked back at the departing ship. “The world has changed in my absence.”
"As it always does," Zhongli mused. Xiao started to walk at an even pace, hoping to escape the concealed looks he could still feel on his skin. Zhongli didn’t comment on it, walking alongside him comfortably with his wider gait.
“How have you been adjusting?”
Xiao pondered the question. How had he been adjusting to feeling light as a feather, as free as he only remembered being at the very first memory he could recollect? Maybe free wasn’t the right word for it. Unburdened would be a better description, although that wasn’t quite it. Happy, he would say. And yet…
“Fine,” he settled on saying. Zhongli acknowledged his words without comment, allowing Xiao to gather his thoughts.
They didn’t talk again until Zhongli brought him to a residence in the upper parts of Liyue Harbor. He opened the door with a key and gestured for Xiao to step in, before closing the door again behind them.
Xiao looked around curiously. The interior was rather mundane, though to call it barren would be the opposite of the verifiable hoard he could see decorating shelves, tables, and every usable surface around.
Zhongli coughed into a fist and told him to ‘wait here’ before he vanished into another room.
Left alone, Xiao caught his reflection in a bronze mirror that was shoved behind a vase depicting a rendition of a flying exuvia. If he hadn’t already felt out of place, he’d have now, for his clothes were torn in several places and the once vibrant colors faded and in-distinctive of each other after 500 years. He couldn’t fault the humans for their stares earlier, as he looked at himself now. His failure as a yaksha was evident in the horns poking out of teal hair, in the claws that adorned his hands and the tainted skin crawling up his arms where it faded back into pale cream colored flesh.
“I thought you’d want something to change into, now that you are…back. Ah.”
Xiao turned away from his unsightly self, to see Zhongli holding a set of folded clothes in his arms.
“…my duty has been given to the mortal exorcists.”Xiao finally voiced what he’d inferred from the way his own absence hadn’t plunged Liyue into peril, and what Chongyun had so far told him of the Tianheng thaumaturges’ contract with the adepti.
Zhongli held out the new clothes to him. “Perhaps, it’s time for the adepti to leave things to the humans, don’t you think?”
He carefully took the clothes with a frown. Xiao’d been guarding Liyue for centuries, before Liyue needed to be guarded against him. Even then, he’d still seen it as his duty as a yaksha.
“We adepti have protected Liyue for centuries.”
He could tell Zhongli was smiling when he spoke next. “That may be so, but aren’t the adepti allowed to decide when this duty comes to an end?”
Xiao falters. “Well—I don’t understand, my lord.”
“Just Zhongli is fine,” Zhongli reminds him gently.
The clothes his lord had handed him were identical to the ones he was wearing, which Xiao was finding warmed his chest in a similar way to how he felt whenever Chongyun would return. Warm, grateful, happy. It was different; this was his lord who had once freed him, had given him a purpose beyond the mindless killing. Different, but no less making him clutch the new set of clothes, sensing the adeptal arts woven into the fabric to be enduring for a hundred years yet to come, and look at Zhongli in confusion now.
What is Zhongli even saying? Far be it from him to question his lord, except—except…
Zhongli’s hand descended on his shoulder, a steadying weight among the questions that cluttered up Xiao’s mind and whirled around his head like a storm. His amber eyes were understanding, nonjudgmental of Xiao’s shortsightedness of what he wanted to convey. “Then tell me, what do you want? Mortals aren’t the only ones who changed.”
What he wanted?
Xiao worried the fabric between his fingers, staring at a collection of noctilucous jade figurines on a shelf behind his lord.
“Irrelevant,” he answered Zhongli’s question.
“Is that so? Well, I must be getting quiet old then, because I seem to remember a young exorcist you’re quite taken with…”
“My lord, please-“
Zhongli chuckled. Xiao didn’t think he imagined the gleam of mirth in his eyes. Just as bad as Cloud Retainer. Not that any of his current thoughts would ever cross his lips, no.
🙜❆🙞
Xiao appeared next to another liyuen residence and breathed a sigh of relief at having escaped politely taken his leave after being thoroughly embarrassed questioned about how Chongyun was doing these days.
The new clothing fit him perfectly. That his lord had remembered his measurements over all these years… Xiao’d been unable to voice his thanks due to his throat clogging up uncomfortably after he’d been ushered to change into them to try them on. He wasn’t even sure when Zhongli had these made, but it had been no more than a few days since Xiao’s return — too short a time to weave adeptal clothes. That Zhongli would’ve made Xiao clothes, even knowing he’d probably never wear them…
He tensed at the sound of a door being opened with force, raised voices reaching his ears.
“—you dare run away from this!”
Chongyun stormed out the door and up the small path, not stopping when he reached Xiao waiting for him. He took Xiao’s hand, just as a woman with the same light blue hair as Chongyun appeared in the door.
“Chongyun!”
Chongyun squeezed Xiao’s hand, staring intensely at a point past him. “I’m not running away.”
Xiao stood awkwardly as Chongyun’s mother walked up to them, her eyes briefly flickering to him and meeting his. Her expression which had been stone faced, slowly melted to sadness. “Come back inside. Don’t run away.”
“I’m not- this isn’t for you to decide.” Chongyun said. “You weren’t even here.”
“And I came back to see you nearly lost your life!” She shouted, then stopped and continued in a gentler tone, “Don’t you think as your mother I deserve to worry about you? You’ve changed, Chongyun.”
“Maybe I have, is that so bad? I’ve tried to make you happy all my life. What about what makes me happy?”
“You and your father… always so stubborn.” She shook her head. “I wish you’d talk to each other instead of deciding to leave. He’ll come around. Someday.”
“Tell me when that day is. I’ll wait. Just not at home where he can forbid me from even seeing my friends.”
“Chongyun— do you know where you’re going to stay?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“I’ll always worry.” Chun Hua said, pushing a small pouch with mora at him. “Tell me if you need anything.”
Chongyun took the mora, biting his lip. “Really. You don’t need to worry.” She smiled gently at him, touching his face with the back of her hand in a way Xiao supposed was motherly.
Her eyes returned to Xiao. “So that’s your infamous boyfriend.”
She folded her hands in front of her, mustering him from head to toe. He wondered if she would’ve been less nice about it if he still wore his torn and faded clothing, and thanked his lord silently for the forethought of gifting him new ones. Her gaze never lingered anywhere too long, and then she turned back to her son with a firm gaze.
“You’ll write?”
Chongyun nodded, his shoulders losing some of the tension from earlier. “Of course I will. I just— I can’t stay here.”
She looked sadly at him. “I know. As your mother I wish it weren’t so, but you deserve to go your own way.”
🙜❆🙞
Xiao looked around. They’d walked from the Harbor with Chongyun venting his frustrations along the road, to stop at Wangshu Inn. It hadn’t changed much in the centuries he’d been gone- The same tree. Here and there the wood had been replaced, but the structure had not, and he found himself relaxing as they entered into the lobby, where Chongyun walked up to the counter.
The woman looked up from her ledger. “Hello! …geometrical patterns, mostly dressed in white. Hmm… oh, you’re one of the Tianheng Thaumaturges. Our inn’s services will be offered to you at a reduced price, of course.”
Xiao saw Chongyun get out the mora his mother had forced on him earlier, counting the amount they’d need to rent a room at the inn. Xiao laid his hand over the mora pouch. “No need.” He said.
Chongyun looked at him in question. “It’s alright. I can always take commissions from the adventurer’s guild, and besides, you heard part of it. I don’t think I’m welcome at home right now…”
Xiao shook his head. Maybe Chongyun wouldn’t need to pay at all, if he was right. Facing Verr Goldet again, he asked, “Is the room at the top still there?”
Verr looked at him, then at Chongyun, then slowly asked him for his name, opening the ledger.
They did get his old room, after Verr confirmed his identity and handed over the key. It had been preserved through the centuries, even when he’d been declared as ‘dead’ by Liyue’s people. It was an unnecessary gesture, Xiao thought, when they ascended the stairs. Truly, why would someone take care of an empty room, instead of re-purposing it? But when he opened the door and saw Chongyun look curiously around, he felt grateful that they did, because it was nice to have a place he could return to. A place that hadn’t completely changed.
Xiao watched as Chongyun walked around, tracing a scratch in the wall curiously, and looking out the window facing Dihua Marsh. Xiao remembered the scratch was from when he’d clutched his spear upon his return and stumbled in through the window in an ungraceful heap once. The blade had rammed into the wall and left the scratch in the plaster. When he’d seen it the next day, he’d immediately walked down the stairs to inform the current manager about this, bowing in apology and promising to fix the damage. She’d waved it off and told him not to worry; had asked if he was alright, if he needed anything.
Xiao’d not quite understood her concerns.
As the evening settled over Wangshu Inn, they found themselves seated at a corner table in the inn’s dining area, surrounded by the faint aroma of steaming dishes and the low murmur of other patrons. The breeze carried the scent of the silk flowers growing along the road.
Chongyun absentmindedly stirred the contents of his bowl, the swirling steam rising to meet his troubled face. Xiao sipped at his tea, silently observing him, before he decided to cut the silence. “You seem troubled.”
Chongyun glanced up, his eyes reflecting the lantern light. “It’s just… the situation with my mother, I’m sorry you had to witness that. She's... She's always been more understanding than my father, but… you were involved in my injuries and that I... risked my life to save you- she didn’t say it but I think she needs time to come to terms with everything. Chongyun took a deep breath, his shoulders relaxing slightly. "I’m worrying too much. You must think me silly for having such problems."
Xiao thought about Zhongli handing him the clothes Xiao was wearing right now. He thinks of 500 years of loneliness and insanity, with half a memory of his lord in tears that he thought he must have imagined.
"There's no need for apologies.” He said. “Family is…complicated. Even for adepti.”
They continued their meal, Chongyun eating his no longer steaming stir-fry and Xiao sipping the rest of his tea.
“Chongyun, right? Sorry to interrupt your meal, but there's something urgent. A ghost has been haunting the inn.”
Chongyun's chopsticks paused mid-air, and Xiao looked up, to see a nervous looking man standing at their table. Seeing he’d gotten their attention, the man introduced himself as the inn’s chef. Having seen the colors of a Tianheng exorcist, he’d approached their table during a spare moment in his work.
"I didn’t inform you exorcists yet, since she’s not doing anything bad, really. Just scaring the guests, hanging around. But it's affecting my kitchen now, and I’ve not been able to work with steady hands at all since. If you two could maybe talk to her, convince her to stop, that would be best."
Chongyun's chair scraped against the wooden floor as he hastily stood, determination etched across his face. "We'll take care of it!"
Xiao's hand shot out, snatching Chongyun's arm and halting his impulsive ascent. "Finish eating," he commanded, his voice a low murmur that brooked no argument. Chongyun sank back into his seat, using the chopsticks he was still holding to resume eating.
Turning his attention to Smiley Yanxiao, Xiao‘s eyes narrowed slightly. "You said 'her.' You saw the ghost?"
Smiley Yanxiao nodded. “She’s a small girl. Actually, we’re all puzzled why she seems to hang around, since she’s not vengeful or something.”
Unfortunately, the chef couldn't offer more insights, and with a hurried apology, he retreated back into the depths of his bustling kitchen.
Chongyun abandoned his chopsticks, standing as his bowl sat empty. Xiao rose as well.
Their only lead being the kitchen, they descended the stairs and were allowed a look around while Yanxiao stood aside, cutting board abandoned.
Xiao was doubtful of this ghost, but Chongyun was almost vibrating out of his shoes in excitement over this commission, so Xiao said nothing. He blinked at the sudden appearance of a young girl, able to see through her to the shelf behind. Seeing that he’d spotted her, she giggled and vanished again.
The ghost led them on a small chase all around the inn, possessing furniture to trip them that had Chongyun nearly face plant in a decorative flower vase, as well as paintings. It had Xiao rather amused by how childish she was.
He followed Chongyun outside the inn, the lanterns at the roadside giving them enough light to look around for her tell-tale blue glow.
There she was, skipping and hopping like kids her age were want to do, over the bridge leading to the Plains.
Chongyun pointed her out, hurrying after her fading blue form. They followed her to a small corps of sandbearer trees, where she vanished from sight again with a giggle. The ruin hunter she’d been standing next to came to life, and Xiao readied his spear.
He’d allow a game of tag, she was just a child after all. But this was getting out of hand. Xiao evaded the attack from the ruin hunter, his spear striking its metal hull. It took him a minute to take it down, taking the mechanical core to make sure it wouldn’t activate again.
Some feet away, the girl materialized again, singing a curious tune.
“Finally caught you,” Chongyun muttered, slightly out of breath. “Haunting things isn’t nice. Are you…even listening?”
The girl stopped in her singing. “Xiǎo Míng won’t tease the travelers at the inn anymore. Next time, you can come play with Xiǎo Míng.”
Chongyun leaned down with a smile. “I’d like to be your playmate Xiǎo Míng. But it wouldn’t be safe for you to be near me. I’ve too much yang in me, and that will make you sick.”
Xiǎo Míng cocked her head, “But gege is not making me sick right now.”
“Listen to him. He’s right.” Xiao said. She looked down with a pout, kicking her feet.
“I can still play with you whenever I’m not scary, okay?” Chongyun tried, glancing at Xiao to play along. Xiao nodded.
She looked at them, before she was smiling again, jumping up and down. “Okay! You can play with Xiǎo Míng whenever you want. And when you don’t, Xiǎo Míng will find you!”
They watched her fade away, her presence lingering.
“That was…”
Xiao crossed his arms. “A ghost.”
Chongyun had a peculiar expression on his face. “Are they all like this?”
“Most ghosts aren’t like her. She’s…childish.” He turned around, about to walk back to the inn. Chongyun’s footsteps hurried over the grass, before he appeared at his side.
“Right, most would be angry, or sad, or. Malevolent spirits, I guess.” Chongyun mumbled, the excitement yet to fade. “I can’t believe I met a ghost.”
Xiao tilted his head, watching Chongyun radiate with happiness. He’d seldom seen Chongyun express himself so strongly, his lips upturned into a big smile and his eyes sparkling almost.
“You’re happy.”
Chongyun turned towards him, still smiling. “Of course, I met a ghost!” His smile softened. “Thanks to you, actually.”
Oh.
Xiao leaned in. Chongyun’s lips were soft, tasting of the stir-fry Chongyun had eaten earlier. Xiao mapped Chongyun’s lips with his own, holding the exorcist in his arms and feeling hands tread through his hair at the back of his head.
He felt Chongyun’s heart race, felt Chongyun’s hot breath fan his face as he drew back to kiss his cheeks, his forehead, watching Chongyun blush and laugh freely. They’d both been changed – while still radiating with a brightness that vanquished any and all darkness in the immediate area, Chongyun’s yang spirit was still greatly weakened by forcing it to burn through his meridians in a way that went against the natural order. It would return, but for now it allowed Chongyun to be the exorcist he’d wanted to be once.
Xiao traced the thin line that would remain forever on Chongyun’s face. He cups his cheeks with both hands, looks into blue eyes and cherishes the moment as best as he can.