Alright let me try this again.
What if Reader vented to Birb Xiao, not knowing that it was actually him?
They talk about their fears and frustrations, letting out all the words they've wanted to tell a person, but they have to settle for their pretty bird because no one will listen.
So Xiao is just sitting there, resting in the True Creator's hands, listening as he gets a glimpse of how they truly feel.
They say the milileth is like a raging stampede with their spears and swords. They say how the Qixing all seem so cold and unfeeling. They talk about how Zhongli genuinely terrifies them, because he acted so kind to others but was borderline cruel when hunting them.
They talk about Xiao, too, but they don't seem to have many complaints. They haven't seen him in a while, and the last time they crossed paths with him, he just... let them run. The adeptus had looked angry, but also a bit startled (and perhaps, a bit guilty?) at the sight of them. They even once overheard him leading milileth soldiers astray ("by mistake" says the creator, but Xiao knows the truth) by saying the creator had left a while ago, when really, they were still very nearby. While they say they are still a bit scared of him, they don't fear him as much as they fear the others.
All the while, Xiao sits, still as a stone. He takes in every word, every shaky breath and darting glance. He nuzzles into their hand, hoping to offer even the slightest bit of comfort.
He hopes that they continue to be unafraid of him in the future.
-Sibling Anon
he who is without sin
a/n: decided to make this one a full fic for no reason in particular (i don’t have an actual post shhhh)
word count: 1.1k
-> warnings: imposter sagau things, minor blood mention, spoilers for xiao lore, some spoilers for liyue (like names and titles of people/places)
-> gn!reader (you/yours)
taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky || @valeriele3 || @shizunxie || @boba-is-a-soup || @yuus3n || @esthelily || @turningfrogsgay
< masterlist > (has context for bird!xiao if you’re lost)
from the moment that xiao was saved, when his new name was bestowed upon him and he signed his contract with morax, xiao had made a promise. another contract, one without physical ink and paper, one bound to his soul.
one to you, his creator.
a pledge to stand by your side, a clause written in by the god that forged his original contract, releasing him from his duties to liyue to serve the one that had granted him life. a permanent extra sweep to his duties, always on the lookout for the highest god above all.
however, he was not the first to find… ‘you.’
‘you’ had landed in sumeru, nested in the large tree surrounding the akademiya. ‘you’ had climbed down, introduced ‘yourself’ to the sages with a smile. everybody was quick to give ‘you’ the glory rightly the creator’s, ushering ‘you’ atop a throne of silver and gold, offerings laid at ‘your’ feet with all the haste of those deprived of the divine.
xiao may have hung back at the beginning, unwilling to allow his karma to infect ‘your’ other worshippers, but he still did his duty. he still kept ‘your’ path clear of enemies, and was the first to pick up his blade when word broke of your imposter.
and yet, when he laid eyes upon the one he was supposed to hate, he was the first to repent.
xiao took a shaking breath, crossing his arms around himself. “morax?”
the elder god turned, amber eyes soft. “what is it, xiao?”
xiao marched through dihua marsh, polearm gripped tightly in his hand. a large hilichurl camp had been reported, which while not an issue normally, was the third in the last four days.
irritation was openly displayed on his face, the anemo around him simmering with his anger. why did the abyss have to act up now, when they were on a hunt? surely even they, as infected and riddled with darkness as they were, worshipped a god? or was that the source of their evil?
he kept marching north, only turning his head at the sound of a soft gasp.
“how will i know when the creator arrives?”
morax smiled, not upset like xiao had anticipated. “don’t worry about such things. when the time comes-“
you stood on the path branching west, eyes wide. you looked nearly exactly like the ’you’ on the throne, the same cool eyes that called for your death now wide and staring at him in fear.
“-you will know.”
you turned on your heel, your armful of sunsettias tumbling to the floor, but… xiao did not chase you.
instead he brought a hand to chest, under his necklace. he pressed, feeling the still-regular beat of his heart.
he pressed, searching for the place where his karma used to be.
from the moment that xiao realized the truth, when his new duty was bestowed upon him, he had made a promise. another contract, one without physical ink and paper, one bound to his soul.
one to you, his creator.
he flew down from the sky, landing in your outstretched hand. he chirped a greeting, body relaxing under your gentle touch.
“hello there, friend,” you cooed, sitting straighter under the tree. your tree, the one you kept coming back to, the one he always directed other adepti away from because it was for you, not them. not him.
you fed him as usual, but stayed strangely silent. no stories of the kindness mitachurls showed you, no update on how close or far the people searching for you had gotten, none of the usual things he looked forward to. you just… sat. watching him in your hand, an emotion he didn’t know the name of drawing your brows close.
maybe you just didn’t want to talk today? but if something was troubling you, he wanted you to share, to allow him some of the weight off your shoulders. then again, he was just a bird to you…
“do you know ganyu, pretty bird?”
xiao froze, thankful he was facing your palm so you couldn’t see his eyes widening.
“i thought i did.”
he looked up, carefully, daring to meet your eyes. this time, he could pin down what you were feeling: betrayal.
his finch heart burned.
your thumb pet over his wings, but he couldn’t bring himself to enjoy it. not now.
“i thought she was kind.”
she was, he knew firsthand. how she worried over the tianquan, fretted over her skills both with a bow and with a pen, how her and the yuheng kept each other afloat in the sea of endless work assigned to the jade chamber.
you smiled. it was bitter. “i guess i should have known better regarding the adepti.”
xiao’s heartbeat raced in his ears, something hot burning a hole in his chest. he was an adeptus, he wanted to say, he could be trusted.
but you didn’t know him as an adeptus. you knew him as your little songbird, your friend, the one you continued to risk your life for, even if you didn’t know it.
he chirped once, somber. he wanted to apologize, to take up his blade against his own king on your behalf, to walk up to the fraud’s throne and watch them bleed red.
but you didn’t need that. so he sat in your hand, leaning into your fingers, and let you speak.
as it turned out, today had been a busy day for you. you had wandered into the path of a millelith patrol, which had happened before, but not with keqing at the head of it. not when she had darted forward in a flash of lighting, electro arcing along her sword. not when she’d pulled out and blew a special whistle even as you ran, one that you couldn’t hear but could feel under your skin, taunting you as you tried to navigate the maze of bishui plain.
when you told him of ganyu’s frostflake arrows, he wanted to cry. when you described the anger in zhongli’s eyes, he started to weep.
you didn’t deserve this pain. you didn’t deserve having to outrun planet befall, you didn’t deserve to fear your life being stolen by those who should protect you at all costs- he should have been there. he was south, too far south to hear the whistle, but he should have been called.
he should have protected you.
under the shifting leaves of a sandbearer tree, your songbird cried. and you, none the wiser, continued to spell out the cause of his torment.
.
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Welp, the ref lineup still isn’t done cause I haven’t drawn Shion yet, and the belated valentines I’ve been working on are gonna be like at least a month late cause I just planned three more, but what I did do these past couple weeks is start writing a fanfic and then immediately abandon it to go draw a bunch of only tangentially-related suzutsubas (except for that first pic; that’s a scene from it, albeit one I haven’t written yet), only half of which are fit for public posting (one of ‘em I could make a few edits and feel ok about posting sometime; it’s not that out there, it’s just, y’know. Hamal Cine Bad End Hyperbolic Torture Chamber. I’m usually very “whatever happens happens” about my art but if I don’t show some restraint I know I’ll end up stuck in there forever), but hey, since I’ve been teasing them for ages and finally have some finished stuff with them, take a couple Suzumii! Also gonna ramble abt headcanons under the cut (and it will be LONG)
To begin, a note abt my Len’en gender/pronoun headcanons: as a they/them preferrer myself, I’m thrilled that most people just stick with those for everyone, but I’ve developed some more detailed headcanons as I go through working on designs and I’ll generally be using those. Don’t worry though, most of them are still nonbinary and basically all of them are trans/gq. Relevant ones for this post are Tsubakura: they/them nonbinary (transmasc to some degree) and Suzumi: cis female, question mark?? (to be elaborated on); for clarity’s sake I usually use she/her for Arde and Hamal Cine individually and plural they for the system collectively (also I don’t usually use their nicknames, dunno why), but singular they for Benet (the wiki says Benny is probably short for Benetnasch so I’m assuming that’s their actual name) for reasons which will also be elaborated on (sort of).
Aaalso this clearly isn’t autobiographical or anything but I think I’m subconsciously putting a lot of myself into Suzumi because 1) we do look pretty similar (brown wavy bob + blue eyes) and 2) given their current status as both the main antagonist and the most well-known plural Len’en character (I get the impression that Hooaka also being plural isn’t super common knowledge; I mean it took me several read-throughs of their wiki page and their dialogue with BPoHC Secret Team to get what they were getting at lol) I am probably way too anxious about doing a bad stereotype. Just an observation and also probably partially why I’ve even ended up with so much headcanon for them in the first place
And before I get into the thick of it, notes on derivations from canon: I’m running with the assumption that Suzumi being a system is a relatively recent development tied to whatever incident it was that caused the falling-out, since Tsubakura is like the only person who seems at all familiar with Hamal (including Mitori/Chouki/Fumikado, but they’re more easily explained away as just having met with one of the other alters the few times they’ve interacted) even though she’s supposedly usually the one fronting. They don’t seem to know the mechanics of it though, judging by their confusion when Arde implied that she and Hamal are different people. So basically, I’ll be referring to pre-incident Suzumi as a different character from any of the other three. (Ngl I am very influenced by Dissociation Constant on that and just in general [when will my wife The One and Only Suzutsuba Fic return from the war…..]) I was also debating whether to have Suzumi have any history with the gang before starting to work at the lab/whether stuff would happen around high school or college age, cause they keep referring to everything happening “a long time ago” and I know I, a 24-year-old, feel like stuff that happened five years ago was like yesterday, but I do have the pandemic and not really doing much of anything for most of that time to reckon with so like, eh. College age makes more sense in my head and so does the dynamic of like, Suzumi was only introduced into the friend group (she was acquainted w Hoojiro and Yabu already though bc lab) because she was dating Tsubakura and since that ended, and badly (understatement of the century), they have extremely little reason to be civil with each other and also interacting at all is really awkward.
Ok now on with it! Either end of high school or beginning of college, Suzumi ends up interning at Tsubakura’s lab for college credit (Tsuba’s already practically a department head despite being like 17 or something because. Idk. Who even knows what’s up with them) and she’s like. Only wears t-shirts and jeans (bought a bunch of khakis for this job though), [reading] glasses from the men’s section, hates leaving her hair down (it’s lab safety anyways). Repressed queer in denial, you know the type. Starts interacting a lot with Mx. Tsubakura “wears short shorts that everybody thinks are actually a skirt and also uses ore and omae almost exclusively” Enraku who seems to have everything all figured out and is immediately starstruck (GIRL WHY?? they are such a mess). Lots of “do I want to date them or do I want to be them” confusion (this will be relevant later); eventually evolves into the “am I trans or just a lesbian” question (not that they would need to be attracted to women to be into Tsubakura but you get the picture), which never quite gets answered.
In any case, they do eventually start dating (Tsubakura thinks she’s cute and smart so they reciprocate), and they’re not like super great together cause Tsubakura is emotionally constipated at the best of times (Suzumi’s into that though) and neither of them are the most mentally/emotionally healthy people even back then and also Tsubakura is more or less Suzumi’s boss which is weird, but they’re kind of ok??? Tsubakura’s mom dies at some point, also they move in together (college housing is expensive), the rest of the crew at the very least tolerate Suzumi, etcetera.
And then…! [insert catastrophic event here]!! I don’t have a shot to call on this yet cause I have no idea what it could’ve been (and I’m sure it’ll get revealed at some point anyways); I’m just banking on it being something extremely not mundane and something where you could reasonably set the blame on either (or neither) party cause they sure both seem convinced the other is way worse, huh! In Tsubakura’s case at least, blaming Suzumi is partially a defense mechanism so their self-loathing doesn’t get the better of them over it (guess what the fic was supposed to be about, lol).
The worst part of all this business though is that they DON’T break up over it immediately and it just makes everything orders of magnitude worse for everyone involved. Tsubakura and Arde have hate sex MORE THAN ONCE………… they would both really rather forget about it. Hamal thinks it’s hilarious, ofc, but the less said about her, the better. And Benet… exists??? The only idea that I’m running off of for them atm is the observation that I think they’re the only character with flat black eyes other than Tsubakura/Tsurubami and the subsequent idle thought, “hey if someone malded so hard about a breakup that they ended up with an introject of their ex would that be messed up or what?” So make of that what you will. (Oh and it may have been obvious that this is what I was going for but Hamal is femme and Arde is butch and they’re constantly squabbling abt aesthetic presentation. Having Arde be straight-up male would’ve been too straightforward of an interpretation and I think it’s funnier this way)
The canonically mentioned murder attempts start taking place and I’m leaning towards Tsubakura eventually being convinced to move out even though it was originally their apartment, albeit mostly just because the wikipedia page for house sparrows mentions that they’re known to take over swallows’ nests, usually after they’ve been abandoned, but they will sometimes drive away or kill the current occupants, and that was a very fun fact to come across when specifically doing research for Len’en but idk how else to incorporate it lol. And so on and so forth up until the present time.
Uhhh is that all I have atm? I think so! Anyway, I think I finally shook out all my suzutsuba doodles (and rambling, though I do still have that fic to work on. idk whether I’ll be able to finish it though; I started strong with an extended metaphor in the middle but Iiiii’m not sure if I can successfully write my way up to it while making it make sense. Also I may draw pretty slow but I write even slower!! Eh I’m sure I’ll post some of it sometime) for the time being so I should theoretically be able to finish up my bigger projects now. Maybe I’ll have the valentines ready in time for white day? We’ll see!
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