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vividraft · 2 months ago

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fading remembrance pt. 2 !

⇢ ˗ˏˋ gn!reader x xiao

⇢ ˗ˏˋ summary: even though you had passed away in your previous life, your soul was brought right back to xiao

⇢ ˗ˏˋ important notes: this is a repost from my old account (@/rainstops). also this is a continuation of a previous post !

old post masterlist tba !

xiao has never cared about humans a lot, and with the burning memory of your death, his care for mortal beings had pretty much disappeared.

he tried his best avoiding places that you and him had visited together, which was hard because you dragged him along everywhere you went. not like he disliked that, he loved it, but now, with you being gone, he hates being reminded of you.

even the almond tofu that was prepared at wangshu inn for him, was something he couldn't even look at for a while. but he had to eat something, so he swallowed down the tofu along with the weird feeling in his throat when he remembered the special way you used to prepare his favorite food.

After a while, he came to accept that you were gone, and that he wasn't going to get you back.

so xiao started traveling all across teyvat to find a restaurant or a person who made his favorite dish taste even just a little like you made it taste.

but all his traveling was all in vain. every almond tofu he had tasted ever since you prepared it the last time just tasted plain, and even the memory of the way it tasted when you made it started to fade.

So Xiao stopped caring about anything at all, and just went back to the way his life was before you - only fighting monsters, since it was all he knew.

he didn't care about the way Verr Goldet looked at him filled with compassion, he didn't care for the endless thanks he got whenever he saved another mortal from a group of hilichurls, and he didn't care about what he ate and if he ate. it was all the same.

so he certainly didn't care when a new cook started working at wangshu inn.

at least that was what he told himself. so he didn't know why he found himself in front of verr goldet one day, asking what the new cook's name was.

and the name was [name]. weird. It sounded a lot like his past lover's name.

and although xiao didn't care, he found himself ordering a portion of almond tofu from you one day. the way you had greeted him and treated him like he was a normal person, and not a yaksha, reminded him a lot of his past lover. maybe a little too much.

xiao nodded as a thank you when you had handed him the almond tofu he ordered. He dropped a few mora into your hand and teleported out of the place, and onto the quiet balcony he spent most of his time at.

The cold air of today's evening brushed through xiaos hair. he sat down onto the balcony and took out the spoon you had handed him before he disappeared.

the spoon made its way through the tofu, and a small piece of it traveled from the plate to xiaos mouth.

That was when xiao felt his heart skip a beat, and the air in his lungs froze.

the tofu, the dish that you had just prepared for him, tasted like something he had long yearned for and already forgotten. The almond tofu tasted just like how his past lover prepared it for him.

xiao hasn't finished the plate quicker than anything.

From then on, he came up with a million lame excuses, as to why he had to interact with you. He spend days and nights thinking about another reason to talk to you.

and although xiao thought it was impossible, the more he talked to you, and the more your smile wandered into his mind, the more he thought you were the one he had loved in the past.

after a while of him finding excuses to interact with you, xiao made his way out of his usual place to find morax.

maybe the former geo archon could help him with any of the things that were happening.

"you think they are the same person?", morax asked, and his lips quickly found his cup of tea.

xiao nodded frantically.

"Well there is a chance that it is their soul. it might be the soul of the one you had loved in the past", morax explained.

"but even if that is the case, they don't contain the same memories or feelings as the one from your memories held for you"

xiaos eyes remained on the floor, and he balled his fists.

"Is there nothing I can do? Is there no one who could help me?"

"There might be one way to help them remember. Yet this only works if they are willing to remember. if they want to live a new life, and not repeat the one they had lived before, they might deny it, meaning that they will not be the person you have been missing all this time. Are you willing to take the risk?"

xiao had never agreed to anything as fast as this.

"very well. find a way to bring them to me, and i will see what lies within my power"

xiao thanked the former geo archon , and took his leave.

Although you and xiao have interacted a few times before, the question he asked you took you by surprise.

"you want to take me somewhere?", maybe he should have chosen different words. but how was he going to explain that he thought that you carried the soul of the one he had loved before? he had to find a way for you to agree-

"well if you aren't bringing me into any dangerous situations, then of course! but i believe that i will be safe around a yaksha"

there it was again, the way you acted, which made him believe he knew you inside and out.

When xiao led you to a quiet and small location, you didn't expect zhongli to be the one who you were going to meet that day.

you had met him a few times before. you held smalltalk with him at wangshu inn, and greeted him a few times when you saw him in the streets of liyue.

"Greetings [name], please take a seat", he greeted you, and you took a seat at the table across from him. xiao sat beside you.

"Would you care for some tea?"

"of course, why not", you smiled, slowly starting to wonder why you were here.

"you may wonder why you are here today", zhongli started.

"it's a little complicated to explain the situation, but i would like for you to answer me a question.

"oh, well what would that question be?"

"When you see this necklace, what do you feel? do you remember it?", zhongli placed a teal colored necklace in front of you onto the table.

you weren't sure if you had seen it before somewhere. Were you supposed to remember it? because that certainly wasn't the case.

"I do not happen to remember ever seeing this necklace before... but, a strong sense of nostalgia fills me when I look at it. it feels like it belongs to me, and if i have seen it and owned it before, yet i know that i have not seen it before.

"would you like to know where those feelings come from?", zhongli softly smiled. His soft smile made you feel like you could put all your trust into him.

"gladly", you replied.

"please put the necklace on", zhongli said.

you had expected anything, but the things that happened when you put on the teal colored necklace. a golden light washed over you, along with a strong sense of nostalgia. stronger than you had ever felt before. The light was followed by a weird dream. or maybe a vision of sorts?

In your dream you saw a person that resembled your looks slightly, spending time with xiao in a lot of different places.

you heard a few voices, and from what you could tell, the person in your dream was a lot like you. if you wouldn't know any better, you could say that person was you.

of course you knew that last thought wasn't right, but your brain didn't seem so convinced for some reason.

when you woke up, you found yourself lying in one of the hotel beds of wangshu inn. you sat up in your bed, looking around utterly confused. How did you end up here?

you quietly left your room, and walked up to the balcony where you know xiao spent a lot of his time. you now had a lot more questions than you fell asleep with.

When xiao and zhongli heard your quiet footsteps approaching, they both turned around to face you.

"I see you're awake, i was just about to check on you", zhongli greeted you.

"i... have a lot of questions", you replied.

"and I'm sure I have the answers. let's sit down somewhere", zhongli suggested.

Only now while you three were sitting down in the for once empty kitchen off the wangshu inn, you realized how quiet xiao has been all along. sure he has never been a huge talker, but he has been especially quiet ever since zhongli had shown you the necklace, which you were still wearing.

"Tell me, in your dreams, what did you see?", it was such a simple question, yet for some reason it was hard to repeat everything you had seen. not because you don't remember it clearly, no, but it was because you felt an overwhelming wave of sadness with every word that escaped your throat.

At the end, you tried to sum up your thoughts and questions with only one question.

"who did these memories belong to?"

you looked over at xiao who was looking at you with an unreadable expression on his face.

"well it seems that xiaos assumptions turned out to be correct. [name], you are probably going to deny this, but these memories were yours from a different life. you carry the same soul that xiaos lover once carried", zhongli tried to explain, but a thousand thoughts were still running through your mind.

"i... why are you telling me this?", you asked, still processing the information you were just handed.

"I was simply doing something xiao had requested from me, i can hardly explain why he wished for this to happen", zhongli answered.

you looked over at xiao, whose cheeks were now stained a light red. "uh...", he groaned, avoiding your gaze.

"As far as i am concerned, xiao has had trouble accepting his lover's death, and you reminded him of the one he loved so he came to me with his concerns", zhongli answered the obvious question in the room.

"so you're asking me to-?"

"no! i- i mean i was simply... well-", xiao cut you off, his eyes darting anywhere but your face.

you weren't sure how to accept this information. you didn't even know xiao well enough, yet he still recognized your soul as the one he had once fallen for.

and as it seemed, your personality and the one from his past lover seemed very similar.

"I just wanted to see if... i happened to be correct", xiaos head was turned away from yours.

After that, the conversation ended rather quickly, and all of you went back to your usual occupations.

Yet from that day on, you always felt a pair of eyes on you. not in a negative way, but in a way that made you feel safe, like as if no matter what were to happen to you, nothing could actually harm you.

Once it just so happened that you were attacked by a group of hilichurls. you were unprepared and did not have a lot of fighting experience. yet xiao appeared out of thin air to fight off the monsters which were bothering you.

you thanked him, and after nodding and mumbling something under his breath, he quickly disappeared again.

even when he wasn’t visibly around, you could feel his aura on you at all times.

and it honestly wasn't that bad.

you could see why your soul fell for his soul once before.

#! vivis drafts #genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin fanfic #xiao x reader #genshin xiao

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