amazing grace
written 4 april 2024.
"Why do you keep saving me?" Xiao asks one night. His throat is sore, his voice but a faint, painful croak, from the raw, tendriled sores left behind from the act of pulling his karmic debts out of his person.
Venti rests his flute upon his lap. "You keep looking as if you want to live."
Xiao clenches his jaw, but does not let his expression darken. "Have you ever considered that perhaps my desires are not in your best interests?"
(His leather gloves creak.)
Venti rests an elbow on his knee and uses it to prop up his chin with a smile so affectionate and tender, it makes Xiao wish he was even more of a monster than his past sins have already made him.
((For is it not said in Mondstadt that it is through the simple grace of their Archon that people are delivered from demons and into the hands of Freedom?))
"I'm the God of Freedom, Xiao," he says, nonchalant. "I cannot think of a single circumstance wherein someone's desire for the freedom life affords could possibly go against my best interests."
His debts freshly subdued, there are no whisperings of violence in Xiao's head, but having lived with them for so long, he is all-too familiar with the threats— no, the promises— they make him.
Desperate to prove his danger, he swiftly teleports behind Venti, presses a hand between the Anemo Archon's shoulder blades, then teleports them both to the ground. Now with one hand pinning Venti down by the shoulder and the other pressing the point of his jade spear into the wooden floor a few mere hair's breaths away from the bard's own braids, Xiao straddles Venti's waist, breathing heavily as he bares his ugly fangs.
(He can feel each echoing heartbeat ring against his chest, tension curling up his spine, as blood rushes through his ears.)
Venti's jade-green eyes are hardly any wider than usual, though his lips have parted from what must be shock, Xiao thinks. He can count every freckle in every constellation scattered across Venti's nose and cheeks— he must be shocked from their sudden, almost unprecedented proximity.
"What would you do if you knew that by saving my life, you have doomed the lives of hundreds, if not thousands more?" Xiao asks, voice low.
A pause.
((What would you do if you knew that by delivering me from an otherwise inevitable doom, you have only written doom unto yourself?))
Venti opens his mouth and draws a quiet breath, his forehead creasing slightly with the shifts in his expression. He lifts a hand to Xiao's face, seemingly unafraid of the sins which cling to his very being as he wipes the blood from the demon's brow.
"You would never do that," Venti whispers, and a shiver runs down Xiao's spine as Venti trails his bloodied touch down to cup Xiao's cheek. "Not while the breath in your lungs was still free."
Xiao's face burns against his will and best efforts. "And if it's my own fault if I lose control?" he insists, desperate to give his tone the edge of a proper growl.
Venti's fingers wander down to Xiao's chin.
The Anemo Archon's serene face blurs as their proximity increases; Xiao finds his breath quickening in anticipation when Venti's eyelashes flutter shut.
(Whole lives mingle between their breaths.)
"Don't worry," Venti murmurs, his soft lips grazing against Xiao's chapped ones. "I will forgive you."
((Xiao cannot tell if his tears are born of guilt or relief as he lets himself close the gap between himself and his saving grace.))