曉 (xiǎo) : meaning 'dawn'

There’s comfort in the solitude of near daybreak that the balcony of Wangshu Inn offers to Xiao, where his head is not so distraught with the call of Liyue and he comes the closest he has ever come to ease. Here, amongst the gentle breeze and swaying branches of the tree where he bides until daybreak, at least the loneliness is sobering.

As his feet gently sound on the roof, there is something about the radiant stranger beneath him that reminds him of the sun itself. Something about her radiates warmth, reminiscent of the feeling he has when catching the first glimpse of dawn, and the comfort he gleans from it is immediately upsetting.

He leaps down silently, watching her be in awe for a moment before bringing attention to himself with an uneasy tension in his body — and then she looks at him, and it's like the stars themselves are alight in her eyes — like dawn has come too early — like they are burning him from the inside out. 

Her voice is soft when she speaks and he's almost distracted from her words by it had they not been so jarring. Xiao can't put a name to it — the feeling when he sees her. He can name the surprise for his former mentor's death, the underlying disdain for humanity for letting it happen at all in the first place, the guilty pleasure of the almond tofu dissolving in his mouth that makes him bitter.

What he can't name is the slow burn in his chest. He crushes it in between his fingers before it has a chance to be named — it's what he’s best at. It's what he’s built for. 

---

簫 (xiāo) : meaning 'flute'

In the weeks that follow the untimely fallout of the Rite of Descension, the traveler — Lumine, he’s learned — appears to have gained a propensity for nightmares.

Xiao found this out by accident when she once called out his name in her dream-addled state, nearly bumping heads with him when she shot up in a cold sweat. She didn’t say much of anything then — only resting her head against his shoulder and mumbling apologies until she fell back into an uneasy sleep.

This quickly becomes routine, though the two fall into a much more casual step as the weeks go by and never come as close as they did then. Alongside her propensity for nightmares, a case of insomnia seems to have also taken hold as a way to avoid them. And so, Xiao spends much more time entertaining Lumine to sleep than actually consoling her nightmares.

One night, Xiao is absently playing the flute to pass the time as Lumine drifts in between consciousness and unconsciousness when she unexpectedly pipes up. “That’s a lovely tune.”

He stops abruptly. “You’re meant to be asleep right now,” he scolds, side-eying her from where he sits at the edge of the bed.

She hums sleepily, amused. It’s clear even in the limited light of the moon she is nodding off, however much she is fighting her exhaustion. “But you play so wonderfully, Xiao. I’d hate to miss out.”

“It’s past midnight. You need rest.”

Lumine only groans, but she sinks somewhat into the bed obediently. “Will you continue to play?”

He pauses, and then sighs. “Do you promise to try and sleep?”

“I suppose.”

“Lumine.”

She huffs. “Fine, fine. Yes, I promise.”

He waits until she wraps a blanket around herself to put the flute up to his lips again, the sweet and gentle tune sounding once more. His throat tickles, but he hasn't played the flute in so long — especially for someone else. Maybe in time the tickling will subside.

The nights where he plays her to sleep frequent their lives, but so does that feeling in his throat. It's worsened, somehow, to the point where he’s sure that it’s fresh blood in the palm of his glove from his coughs instead of his fights.

“What is this?” Xiao gestures to the teapot and cup on the bedside drawer of Lumine’s bed, a few weeks now into their routine. It’s still hot if the steam is anything to go by, and looks untouched.

“It’s for you,” she responds matter-of-factly. “I’ve noticed you’ve been getting sick, so I made you some tea with honey and lemon for your throat.”

At the mention of it, he feels his throat getting itchy with another cough, one he valiantly fights against as to not prove her right. “That’s preposterous.”

Lumine rolls her eyes, crossing her arms. “And I suppose you’re trying to make a liar out of me, then?”

“That is not my intent, no.”

“Then drink the tea, Xiao.”

He stares at her, eyes narrowed, before he concedes with a huff and drinks from the teacup begrudgingly. “Are you pleased with yourself?”

“Very,” she confirms, nodding. “I can’t believe you spent so long not taking proper care of yourself that you caught a cold.”

“Adepti do not get sick,” he protests, but she only pours him more tea, blatantly ignoring him. It was nice to be taken care of for once. Xiao wishes he felt like he deserved it.

---

淆 (xiáo) : meaning 'confused'

It takes very little time after their teatime for Xiao to realize what is going on — or maybe he’s known this entire time and had been in denial. Whichever it was, he had nothing but contempt for it. In all his years alive, never would he think that the Conqueror of Demons would be conquered by some stupid flower growing in his chest. Eventually, he seeks out his former mentor — begrudgingly, because faking your death still warrants at the very least half a grudge — for some sort of miracle he could perform as an archon. Or ex-archon, it doesn’t matter. It's a stupid last resort, especially for what he's asking, but Xiao just wants a way out of this mess.

The man in question is quiet at first, and the flower in Xiao’s chest seems to tremble under his all-knowing gaze. And slowly, the words fall from his mouth: “You're in love, Xiao.”

"I... I'm not..." He stumbles to grasp the words to combat the words he doesn't want to find. He knows exactly the words he's avoiding — he always has.

"You're in love with her," Zhongli says again, seeing the turmoil on the Yaksha's face, watching his expression crumble as the words tower over anything he had planned on saying to dismiss it. It's like he can see him physically give up on trying to deny it as he visibly deflates in his seat. "My Yaksha—"

"Please, I—" Xiao gasps for air momentarily, his throat unbearably tight, before he tries again. "Please, what can I do to rid myself of it? I don't want it."

"The flower, or love?" Xiao glares at him, and Zhongli has the audacity to have a glint in his eye.

"Now is not the time to try and be poetic and cryptic about my societal affairs," he growls, trying to control his breathing to a normal rhythm. "Please, help me. I don't know what to do."

Zhongli is quiet once more, sipping his tea from a teacup much too reminiscent of the one Lumine offered to him that he thinks for a moment that she was having her own tea time with the archon before him. His throat tightens, and he has to fight the insatiable urge to cough — or maybe laugh at his ridiculousness. Either was viable at this point. 

"You could get her to fall in love with you." 

Xiao snorts. He can't help the uncharacteristic behavior as the way such an astute observer had somehow failed to see how blatantly she softened and cared for someone else is baffling. "Forgive me, but I'm afraid that's out of the question."

"How so?" Xiao narrows his eyes slightly this time. Surely not even he is this naïve. If his suspicions of their tea time prove to be accurate, then the man before him knows exactly how so.

Xiao gives him the benefit of the doubt anyways. "Lumine has already given her heart to another."

Maybe he thought speaking it from his own mouth would have driven him to stray from the path of demise he's somehow found himself on, but all it does is send a sinking feeling deep in his chest. Zhongli's expression remains unchanging and it cements Xiao's suspicions further. “To who?”

“You know who,” he says with an edge to his voice, finding his act of pushing  a little too puerile to stomach. Unbiddenly, his thoughts wander to the target of Lumine’s affections — of his stupid reckless behavior, of his stupid affinity for battle, of his stupid actions to bring Liyue to ruin that nearly succeeded — and how above all his stupidity, that Xiao can’t even blame him for the situation he’s in.

Zhongli watches him carefully. "There is a... surgery that can alleviate your floral affliction should you so wish to take this path."

He doesn’t continue, but Xiao knows everything comes with a price, so he prompts him with an edge of unease. "And the drawback?"

"All your memories of her will be erased."

The reaction from him is visceral. The man watches for a moment, seeing him start to retreat into himself. “I implore you to ponder more upon your answer. You have time until your situation starts to become perilous. Be as it may, you’ve made a valiant effort to keep your flower at bay.”

Xiao actually laughs this time, however mirthless it may be, and it quickly devolves to an insatiable cough. A few petals escape him and there’s a sound halfway between a laugh and a scoff. He supposes the flower growing inside him also learned the realization of his impending doom and decided to rear its head.

“Ridiculous,” he mutters tightly, staring at the petals in disdain, his fingers biting into his hand so hard he thinks they’ll break skin even through the gloves. “It would be that the one good thing I’ve done in this situation is destroy. That’s all I’m good for, right?”

Though he doesn’t look up to see the look on Zhongli’s face, he knows there’s something too much like pity. “Xiao—”

“Stop,” he cuts in bitterly, a sense of shame washing over him — for interrupting, for taking up his time for something so trivial, for his pitiful display, for being in love — as he stands from his seat. “I’m sorry.”

And he’s gone. Xiao knows his answer after all. If he can just keep the flower at the slow pace it’s been until she's found her brother and has sped away to a new world where he'd be nothing more than a third thought — if a thought at all — all would be fine.

---

消 (xiāo) : meaning 'remove'

All is not fine, and it's hardly even the flower's fault. This time, it's his. The stupid Snezhnayan boy who could barely restrain himself from a fight if his life depended on it. He had just... stood there, frozen, in fear — like he wasn't a war-hardened person of power that was watching his lover get impaled in front of him.

Xiao sees it all too slow and all too fast. He sees the long, hooked metal stab straight through her center before tearing straight out of her, the hook causing more damage on the way out. He hates himself for not catching her as she falls to the icy floor — hates himself for letting himself get talked into the bounty — hates himself for not doing enough — and his throat is tight with tears and petals as he continues to hold off the opponent. Childe, eventually broken from his shell shock, finally scurries to her side after sending a polearm straight through the head of the cause of Lumine’s current state. 

Xiao kicks his own opponent to their feet and slams his spear into them for good measure, and his eyes rest on her just as she draws her last breath. He aches — his body, his chest, his heart — it all aches. He points his spear at Childe, tears already streaking down his face. Distantly, he's glad Lumine isn't alive to see him like this, no matter how painful the thought is.

"How could you let this happen?" He presses the spear under Childe’s chin, forcing him to raise his head. "Has war taught you nothing?"

He's quiet, and Xiao figures he's making up an excuse until: "You love her."

"Don't be foolish, I'd've reacted the same had it been anyone else." He's lying through his teeth, but if his first verbal admission of love was going to be to anyone, it was not going to be to her lover.

"You love her," and he says it with more conviction. Xiao hates it — hates him. He digs the spear into his flesh, drawing a soft wince and blood. "I get it. I love her, too."

"If you got it, you would have saved her," he rasps, and he realizes the tears were beginning to freeze on his face. They sting, but he's endured worse. He is enduring worse. "She trusted you to have her back and you just watched her die. You didn't even do anything."

"What did you want me to do, oh great and mighty adeptus?" he snaps, and the hand still gripping Lumine's tightens. "Did you want me to sacrifice myself? To leave her mourning for hundreds of years in every world she'd be in?"

“You think you are so important to have been mourned for that long?” Xiao asks, scoffing. “Get over yourself. You underestimate her.”

“What do you know of grief?” Childe bites out, glaring at him. “Isn’t all you’ve done is cause it? Create destruction in your wake?”

“And you’re any different?” It makes Childe harden his eyes and he grits his teeth. "Do you think you’re suddenly a good man because she loved you?”

"What do you know about love?" 

“What do you ?” he shouts back, moving the spear and making him lift his chin higher, the glare in his abyssal blue eyes more prominent. “What of her brother, harbinger? Do you think he will take the loss of his half kindly? You are not the only person to have lost someone."

"If her brother is already willing to lay Teyvat to waste, what difference does her death make to him?" he snaps darkly.

"You know nothing of loss!" Xiao bellows, a sob threatening at his throat.

"Do not speak to me about loss when the person I love lays dead in my arms!" He's crying, Xiao realizes suddenly. It had been hard to tell between his own bleary vision and how Childe's surprisingly deceptive, but the subtle hitch in his throat draws his attention. "Just because you loved her doesn't mean you get to act like you were the only one who had that right."

His spear drops from Childe’s chin so it is no longer forcing him to look up. Xiao has no defense for it and it shows in the deafening silence that follows. He finally draws his eyes away from Childe and to Lumine for the first time that she's died. She's pale with death and from the cold, her face devoid of the rosy glow he's so familiar with. Seeing her lifeless, bloodied body makes him want to throw up.

And he does, barely able to turn his head to the side before he starts coughing uncontrollably. It's hard to stop when he starts, even more so as he sees the bloodied flowers hitting the snow, so stark against the white background.

"Enlighten me, adeptus," Childe says once he's calmed down. Xiao is too tired to glare at him or react negatively in another way, so he only bows his head slightly to acknowledge that he heard and is willing to oblige. "How long have you been suffering?"

The question is so blunt that Xiao barks out a laugh, though it hurts and sends a spray of blood out. "Suffering? Nearly since the start of my life."

"Don't play coy with me. Not with this." Childe is uncharacteristically gentle, like he actually feels for Xiao on some level. The thought is equal parts infuriating and comforting.

"A few months," he concedes, and a dark and concerned look casts over Childe's face.

"That's—"

"—a long time to be alive?" Xiao fills in, using his staff to prop himself up now and is pointedly avoiding both Lumine and Childe's gaze. "I'm well aware. Not many last this long."

"I'm sorry." Xiao lifts his head slightly, but doesn't look at him still, though the gesture is there.

"It's not your fault," he finally admits. It feels... like relief, almost, as he says it, like he had been holding onto a compressed ball of unresolved and ill-justified anger all this time that just suddenly crumbled.

"It's not yours either." A pause. “What will you do now? About the flower growing in your chest.”

It feels weird to acknowledge it now. “A sensible person would answer to get it removed.”

“Are you a sensible person?”

---

塋 (yíng) : meaning 'grave'

The flower continues to run its course, and Xiao thinks like Zhongli told him to do.

He thinks about the surgery and its consequences — and really, he’s thinking much more about the latter than the former — and wonders if choosing his well-being over his memories of her will be a betrayal somehow, whether to himself or to her, he’s not quite certain. And then he thinks about Liyue, about its people who once needed protection, and how it has reached an age where it no longer needs him. Nothing has for a very long time, and he’s at the very least at terms with it.

It is on Qingyun Peak where his decision comes to realization — where a deathbed blooms from his chest.

He decides: he is not sensible. After all, there is no sensibility in love.

Notes:

---

love and sensibility, an adeptal contradiction

extra writer's notes:
- thank you thank you thank you to all my chinese friends for helping me w the characters even though i ignored a few of the 'maybe don't do that bc its not accurate' messages for the sake of my own aesthetic truly fanfic savers
- hard to tell but xiao does succumb to the disease extremely fast after lumine dies as a kind of 'im tired of fighting' sort of deal and just lets the flower really have at him so he dies like a week max after
- had a hard time wondering if xiao would actually get surgery or not but figured might as well go all the way with the angst and also i like to think it's his own form of 'accepting death on his own terms' (as opposed to dying grimly by some dishonorable way) and a type of 'peace'
- dont ask what happens to childe idk
- in theory he quit the fatui when he started getting more serious w lumine and it's this action that butterfly effects to her death
- i do admit i wish i gave lumine a more honorable death as her being felled by some awry bounty makes me :/ but also that's the genshin experience baby i dont make the rules
- as for aether he probably lays havoc to teyvat very soon after so haha xiao dies just in time to not fight in that war how convenient
- i'm sorry