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He’d had grown accustomed to the pain over the years. The pain of a particularly ferocious attack, the pain of karma overflowing for a moment before finally slowing to a standstill. The pain of losing someone he decided to allow himself to love.
But this pain was different. It was almost pleasurable, Xiao thought, watching the blood drip from his wrist to soak into the dirt. He could barely feel the tears pricking at his eyes. His whole body was numb but his wrist burned , and oh, it burned so nicely. No matter how many times he sliced open his skin and watched the blood seep out, it was like he was feeling it for the first time.
And in the past, he always bandaged the cut and cursed his idiocy. He had a duty, after all.
But not now. Not anymore. He was setting himself free, a little at a time, until the rest of him could be carved out of the world the same way people carved the rotten bits out of apples. Remove his corrupting self, and let the rest of the world go on without him.
He could feel his threads coming undone slowly, the corruption seeping through the veins he’d so desperately tried to cut, and so he trekked on. He had to get away from Liyue. I don’t have much time left, Xiao thought to himself, as he put one foot in front of the other. Soon, I can join the rest of the yakshas. We can finally be reunited.
He didn’t know where he was going, but all he knew was that he had to keep walking. He didn’t have very much time left - he could feel the karma wearing away at him like an ocean at a stone. Except instead of smoothing the jagged edges, it just made him sharper. Sharp enough to hurt anyone who came close, anyone who tried to reach out a loving hand. Sharp enough to prick at his own heart when he thought too much about it.
It hurt to care, it really did, but his existence had been doomed from the start. It hurt to care about Liyue and all its citizens, which was why he was trying to get as far away as possible before he snapped in the first place. It hurt to care about Zhongli, even though he was the one who subjected Xiao to this torturous existence. And it hurt to care about the green-clad bard who had somehow appeared before him.
Venti looked just like he usually did; slightly taller, dressed in the same green and white outfit, black and blue hair braided, lyre at his hip. But his eyes were clouded over, just like the sky, the usual lively gleam nowhere to be found.
“What are you doing here, Xiao?” Venti asked. Xiao could barely hear him over the howling winds - belatedly, he realized his mindless walking had brought him to Dvalin’s abandoned lair. He stood at the base of the great tower.
“Venti.”
“Xiao, this doesn’t answer my question. You’re bleeding badly, we should probably get you to Mondstat. You know how infected hilichurl wounds can get-”
“They’re not from hilichurls. Just - leave me alone, will you? Being near me is dangerous.” He felt as though his head was splitting open. It hurt. Before he knew it, he was falling into something warm and soft, unfamiliar enough to make him want to run away, but still somehow comforting.
“Xiao, answer me. Why are you here, of all places? And look at you, what did you do to yourself?” There was a crack of desperation in Venti’s voice now. Xiao almost laughed for the first time in a century. Out of humor or frustration, he didn’t know. He didn’t dare ask.
“No, you answer me. Why aren’t you gone yet?” He was wearing thin, he knew it. “I can feel it. The karma I’ve built up has finally decided to finish me. I don’t have very much time left.”
“Finish - you mean, you’re going to die? ” Xiao felt Venti’s hand close in a fist around his clothes.
“Not exactly. ‘Corrupt’ is more accurate. Listen, I have to leave.” Xiao squirmed out of Venti’s surprisingly strong grip, facing him to look him dead in the eyes. “I have to get somewhere that I can kill myself without anyone seeing before I lose to the karma.”
“Then let me do what I did last time,” Venti whispered back. “I’ll play my lyre, and I’ll keep you alive and uncorrupted, I promise you-”
“ No! ” Xiao yelled back. “Don’t you get it? I’ve lived long enough like this. Just let me die!” He spat the last words with rage he didn’t know he had. He felt a twinge of guilt as Venti’s eyes dilated in surprise. He took a deep breath in and tried again.
“You’ve lost friends before. You can do it again. So promise me you won’t try to keep me alive this time, okay?”
Silence.
“Maybe we’ll meet again in another life,” he murmured, the lie rolling off his tongue as though it was nothing. In the quiet that followed, Xiao stood up and prepared to walk off when a hand closed around his wrist. Suppressing a hiss of pain, he turned around, avoiding eye contact.
“What do you want?” He snapped, and Venti flinched slightly. A pang of regret flashed through him, a (relieving? painful?) reminder that he could still feel.
“... I don’t want you to suffer, at least.”
“Huh?”
Venti looked Xiao in the eyes, and he found himself unable to look away.
“You… don’t have anything with you that could use to kill yourself quickly. So let me,” Venti said with a voice so gentle he may as well have been telling a children’s tale. “If it means you’ll suffer less, I’ll kill you.”
Was Xiao upset? Grateful? He couldn’t tell if the heat in his chest was happiness or fear or an awful, confusing mix of both.
“Will you really?”
“Yes.”
Before Xiao could respond, another wave of pain washed over him. He gasped and clutched his head as though it was about to shatter and he had to hold it together.
“Xiao!” Venti cried out, catching him quickly before he could fall, and laid him down gently on the stone ground.
Between gasps for air, Xiao managed to spit out a few words. “Get it over with,” he muttered. “I don’t have much time, and corrupted yakshas are one hell of a fight.” The world blurred as tears forced themselves out of his eyes. He rubbed them away to focus on the sight before him.
Venti hovered above him, holding Xiao’s spear. He turned it over a couple of times in his hands before gripping it tightly, resting the tip over Xiao’s heart.
“I said get it over with.”
So the spear lifted off Xiao’s chest for a moment and in a struggle to focus on something, anything, his eyes fixed onto Venti’s. Leaf-green orbs shedding tears for the first time in forever, the slowly rising sun reflected in them, but then his arms blocked out his face as he plunged the spear down and Xiao’s world went white-hot with pain - the bad kind.
Then black.
(Was this gratitude, or remorse?)
And it was all gone.