#tragically my penchant for thorough prompts carries over through every fandom it seems

[icarusalatus]

Zhongxiao fic idea scribble

(furiously written in one burst when the idea took over my mind some time ago - sorry that it is not necessarily coherent, especially the second half. also i'm pretty sure (certain) that the idea of small bird/finch!Xiao in my brain was planted there by @stormy-seasons' fic, of which i highly recommend all. i do apologize for lifting that and running with it. i desperately love your work)

context:

xiao goes missing-highly-presumed-dead at some point between genshin timeline and "modern" time. like its not even missing really his fate is so clearly ended.

this idea starts in modern times; zhongli is still alive still among the people but the time of gods has given way to technology and the history of old teyvat is now regarded only as legend by most, so its pretty heavily just modern au with the caveat that zhongli is still rex lapis and still remembers.

zhongli pov

zhongli has a good, well-paying job, dresses nicely in his formal fashion that's now seen as eccentric at best and antiquated at worst, seems by all accounts very put together and proper but the truth is that he still has a soft heart.

and one day he finds an injured little finch right outside of his apartment.

humans who know him now might think he wouldnt care, or dont know him well enough to realize how soft he is inside, but he picks up this little finch, and decides to nurse it back to health himself.

a big contributing factor to this being that when he first saw the finch on his doorstep, he was absolutely stricken because it reminded him so heavily of xiao, this little bird. it looked almost exactly like xiao's bird form. Xiao's been dead for at least a century at this point so its a bittersweet likeness, but it still tugs zhongli's heartstrings into tender action.

so zhongli takes this bird in and takes care of it. it has some difficult injury, like a broken leg or broken wing, and zhongli wonders if it would be kinder to put the bird out of its misery instead of tending to it and encouraging it to live like this. needless to say, the parallel is SO STRONG.

all the while zhongli is thinking about xiao, maybe telling the little bird stories about xiao and gently rubbing its head or feathered chest and saying you look just like him, you know?

the bird is part of his routine at this point, like after he took it to get checked out by a wildlife expert and it got a teeny little gauze wrap around the broken appendage, he takes it to work with him (maybe he works in a museum) to keep an eye on it, since it cant fly away and he doesnt want to leave it at home alone, and then when it starts being able to fly a little more he leaves it at home in a spare room that he decks out with enrichment so it's safe but not caged.

one day someone at work asks, "How's your little bird?" and he's ripped back several millennia to when Azhdaha asked him that same exact question, in reference to Xiao, and it hurts.

zhongli has made peace with xiao's death, but it will never not ache.

zhongli doesnt have many friends left, to be quite honest. xiao isn't the only adeptus to have left the world since the events of The Traveler, and of course, human mortals are defined by their mortality.

he has tried to keep afloat, to find more connections in the sea of ever-increasing population in teyvat, but the people are less social now, or social in ways that zhongli just isn't. he has acquaintances, but no one really knows him anymore. even the other gods have slipped into obscurity in time, and though some nations remain more religious than others, it's not easy to find another god masquerading as human in a world of billions of humans. the largest needle in a haystack. if theyre even still alive at all.

so this little finch may just be the only real connection he has. even when it seems fully healed, he's reluctant to admit to himself that maybe it's time for the little bird to go, and he finds any excuse to keep it for just a little while longer, just one more week for observation, just a few more weeks to quarantine.

in his defense, the little bird seems to love him, it will come sit close to him even when he's doing nothing, it will chirp back at him when he talks to it, it will sing in its room even when he's not there, it rushes to be near him when he comes home from work. it doesnt seem distressed to be kept in his apartment at all, but.. maybe it is, and he just can't read its little mind.

eventually, he has to let it go. he has to.

he can't bear the idea of abandoning it in the park or anything, so he just. he starts leaving the windows open. opens the door for the finch if it goes near.

it seems interested in the change - it will stare at the door when zhongli opens it… but then it will hop back around and go to the kitchen or the living room and settle there instead. In fact, it happens so much that zhongli starts to think it just doesn't care for the outside world at all. he stops opening the door for it when it starts just staring at him until he closes it, and begins coming around to the idea of keeping it, properly, as... not as a pet, but as a little house companion. he still leaves the windows open in case he's wrong, but some of the heartache settles away.

until one day he wakes up, and the little bird is gone.

zhongli has this pit of dread in his stomach as he searches the house, in denial even as every room comes up emptier than the last, and its a horrible fucking parallel to those exhausting months turned lingering years when he overturned every fucking rock and cave in liyue looking for xiao all those centuries ago, and coming up with nothing, not even an elemental trace of him. and this is only an apartment. he doesn't even have time to come to terms with it while he's doing it this time.

when he's done looking, he just sits on the floor with one of the bird's toys in his hands and cries. mourns all at once. his only true connection in the world, the joy he felt every time the bird wiggled around in his hands to be petted, and, if he's honest with himself, xiao. he was still rex lapis when xiao passed away, he had his duties to attend, even after he retired, a whole nation to keep an eye on, paired with the denial of what actually happened to xiao, years of searching and not admitting... eventually he let himself acknowledge the absence left in xiao's wake, but told himself that it was inevitable, and at least xiao wasn't suffering anymore. he never let himself grieve the memories, not like he was doing for the bird now, and all of his pain, accumulated over thousands of years, never allowed to take a moment to come out like this, pours out all at once. he cries for days. until he feels hollow, like he's cried out everything inside of him.

eventually, zhongli pulls himself back together again. or at least, enough to get up off the floor and make himself some tea. he doesnt physically age, but he's sure that seven thousand years of tears' worth of dehydration did not help.

he sits at his dining room table and drinks his tea (painful in its own way, but at least no one makes osmanthus wine anymore). when he finishes the pot, he makes another, and returns the emails from the museum asking where he is, apologizing for the absence without warning, and telling them, not untruthfully, that he has been through a few chronically life-altering losses. he doesnt tell them that those have been spread out over the last seven thousand years. it is simply not their business.

one of his coworkers, who was CC'd on the email, emails him separately to offer her condolences and ask if she can bring him any food he likes, or anything else he needs. he's almost taken aback by the kindness, and his husk of a heart warms infinitesimally. maybe new connections in this age aren't so unattainable for him, after all

he asks, with watery eyes that he wont keep from spilling over if they so desire, not this time, if she knows how to make almond tofu.

she says to give her his address and she'll have it over for him as fast as her hands can make it, and zhongli does. his heart doesn't have the healing powers that his body does, but this is a start. the first step.

he holds the finch's toy as he waits, tries not to look at it because that wound is still so fresh, but is comforted by it.

the doorbell shakes him out of his thoughts. it comes sooner than he would have expected, but he must have been more wrapped up in his thoughts than he realized. he goes to the door, pulls it open-

and it's xiao.

it takes zhongli a moment to react. xiao is wearing black clothes that don't fit him, so in contrast to the only outfit zhongli ever saw him wear that zhongli considers that his brain might be broken. it might not be xiao, he just spent so much time with a finch that looked exactly like him, clearly it wasn't impossible for xiao to have a human doppelganger too.

except, he just spent so much time. so much time, thinking about xiao, talking about him to the bird, his posture, his mannerisms, what he looked like.

He worries that he might be hallucinating, then. there's a first time for everything. but he doesn't think he would have hallucinated xiao in clothes he'd never seen him wear. he doesn't even have shoes on. it's. it must be…

and then xiao reaches out, touches his shoulder. and it's real. it's real.

zhongli falls to his knees

xiao's pov

when xiao went missing, the truth was that he never actually left. that's why no one could find him, and no one ever found his body.

he was out doing his usual patrols, trying to stay out of the way of humans, when his karmic debt flared in a way it had never done before. scorched him from the inside out. whether it was an evil in the soil underneath him rising up and reacting with his soul like toxic fumes, or one step too many for fate to allow. one second he was fine. and then he was on the ground, gasping.

he was no stranger to pain, physical or karmic, but this was something entirely... entire. like a wick accustomed to the burning of a teardrop of flame finding out that the fire of a candle is nothing compared to a razing, unpredictable forest fire.

he knew what happened to the others, and now, what was happening to him. his only thought was that he didn't want to hurt anybody, when he lost control. so, with his dying breath, he reached out to find the power in his debt. if it were powerless, it couldn't hurt him. so he reached out, and leeched its energy castoffs, and brought them inside. manifested his wish: to become, in his entirety, small. breakable. in case he lived and lost himself to madness after this. let him be easy to kill. even for the humans. his own bird form drifts in the back of his mind's eye. and then even that goes dark

thoughts as a bird come often but are not easily kept. they escape quickly, most thoughts, like wind past wings. it's years before the bird even realizes it has thoughts at all. that it has memories. bird didn't used to be bird. wings once, then not for a long time. many memories as not-bird, but unfamiliar. and then dark, long time. then light. not-bird when first dark, bird before light.

slowly, over the years, the thoughts become longer. they mix thought and memory. more people now. people-place bigger. less not-people creatures. people look different. birds look different too. bird changes to look like other birds. new animals. metal animals. make dark. dark like before, comes from metal animals. burns. don't fly through dark. metal animals always change. metal animals colorful now. now, not before. people-place loud. scary. scary.

for years and years, the people-places get bigger and bigger. it never stops. it wants to stay away, to be safe, but bird has no home. bird has no nest. never had home, even when not-bird.

eventually, when the people-place is less dark all over, the bird goes there. it senses something there, deep inside. something... closer to home. it wants home.

it doesnt want to fly anymore.

and then, suddenly, it can’t.

wing hurt. ow. ow. hurt. hurt. find home. find safe. in its pain, it can only follow instinct. it senses warm, here, in people-place. senses something familiar. it tries to fly, and when it can't bear it anymore, it hops. closer and closer to where its instincts pull and assure warmth and safety. it knows things, it remembers things. windows are like air but hard. not safe. don't fly. doors open and lead to rooms. it is overwhelmed by not-quite-memories. and then warm is close. warm is so close so so close warm warm safe where is safe-warm?

and then the door opens, and it is a people. safe-warm is a people, bird remembers! this people!

the people observes it as it falls over trying to hop closer, tries to right itself with one wing. the people gently picks it up with- arms! bird used to have those. it shakes out its feathers and looks up when the people lifts it closer to its face, and the bird nearly falls out of the people's hands when it sees because that people! it remembers that people from its not-bird memories ! that face is the best thing that ever happened to it!

That people- no, that- that isn't right. this is not a people. this is. is. world. skies and clouds and sun and nest and . and . hope. trust. everything. Everything is looking at bird with wide eyes. it must recognize bird! bird wiggles in Everything's hands, or tries to, until its wing bends bad and it wails a pained peep. Everything frowns - no! - and draws it up closer to its face - yes! - to look at its wing. Bird settles in Everything's palms. Everything will take care of it.

Bird puffs its chest when Everything strokes its feathers. attention! from Everything!

Everything chirps something, something with- with people sounds that bird knows but doesn't understand. but it's so, so familiar. someday, bird thinks, in its bird-thoughts, with bird-words, bird will understand what You look just like him means.

Xiao does understand, now. he picked apart every speaking bird-memory when he... is "woke up" the right term? He doesnt even know how he did it. one moment he was sitting in someone's backyard, lost and alone and scared, and the next he was glad that humans still hung their laundry out to dry in... what year was it? Anyway, he doesn't know if Zhongli wants to talk about it. Those words weren't meant for him, anyway. Or, they were, because the finch was still him, but not for. someone with context.

Zhongli had let him in, so at least he's not angry. That thought feels weird in Xiao's head after hearing so much about himself through Zhongli's own perspective, as the finch being told stories of himself. of course Zhongli’s not mad. but he is staring at xiao unblinkingly like he has been for the last few hours, pausing only once to answer the door when the sound of a bell played and returning with Almond Tofu in a strange flexible glass box with a purple lid. Zhongli clearly didnt know he was coming back, or who he even was, so that raises many questions.

he's been answering zhongli's questions since he got in the door, but it's still shocking to get an answer to some of his own.

"I was thinking about you," zhongli says, like it doesnt make xiao's heart tremble in his chest.

zhongli admits to xiao that he might have been a factor in xiao's return to human form, because once he came to terms with the fact that the finch was gone, he may have sent some of his power out to ensure that it would be good and safe and happy and free and he must have put enough out to dissolve the karma-binding to the finch form xiao had manifested all those centuries ago.

but that wouldnt have been possible without xiao's own intrinsic power and energy slowly leaking out and dissipating most of the karmic debt in the centuries he was just a bird, who needed less of his own power to stay alive and who wasn't constantly accruing more and more debt.

the debt that has finally been paid, it seems. there are traces of it left, but only on a surface level. not soaked into xiao’s very spirit, as it once was.

it wasnt a coincidence that the finch ended up on zhongli's doorstep, it was precisely because it was xiao that it ended up there, of all places, seeking help, shelter, warmth. even with only two bird brain cells rubbing together trying to make fire, xiao was drawn to the traces of zhongli, because he knew, instinctually, that that presence would help him and keep him safe.

and it was precisely because of the bird form, and Zhongli’s longing for xiao, wishing that he had been there to take care of xiao in his pain, that Zhongli chooses to nurse it back to health himself.

fate intertwining with itself, some might say.

the end

(zhongli gets the comfort after his hurt and they cuddle a lot and maybe admit feelings? the main throughline of this fic, the grief and rebuilding of self, could be read as platonic, if you squint. but ideally there would be some emotional intimacy by the end as they both lean into each other while dealing with their respective revelations. they dont need labels. they have everything they need returned to them already.)