Winter Moon | Xiao x Fem Reader

Good wine and a good story

For a Celestial God, pain didn't register the same way it did for mortals. You'd seen people cry over a small cut caused by a knife on their hand or over a scraped knee.

As a God with a duty as enormous as yours, pain was something ingrained in your everyday life, an unfortunate necessity, as Nuwa would say. Yet, you didn't know having your heart torn from your chest would be as agonising as it was.

Even now, millennia later, you could still feel the phantom pain of feeling every muscle being pulled apart and the bones of your rib cage cracking under his hand. You could still taste the blood crawling up your throat and down the sides of your face and could still envision those terrifying eyes and that chilling smile staring at you, overjoyed, as you took your last breath.

As he took up your line of sight, making you unable to see anything else except his face, you didn't have a choice but look, as if you didn't see the same mask in your nightmares every now and then.

He stood there, watching you, his face so close to yours. Even though you couldn't see his actual face, you could feel his smile underneath his mask. He was delighted at seeing your wide and terrified eyes staring at the ones on the mask, tears trickling down the side of your face and down to your ears, sweat making your hair stick to your forehead and to your neck.

You were truly petrified. Your body was trembling violently and if you still had a heart, you're sure you'd hear it beating violently in your ears. You were waiting. Waiting for him to do something. Kill you? Take you away? Even simply say something? But the white figure just stood over you for what seemed like hours, and perhaps it truly was a few hours as the sky outside the window slowly started to brighten.

The figure above you didn't seem bothered though as he continued to stare at you as if you were an artwork in a museum. More of a caged animal in a zoo, you felt like. The eye-contact broke as you saw him move his arm towards you. You thought perhaps this was the end, the moment where he finished what he started 3000 years ago. You followed his hand with wide eyes as he started trailing it up your stomach and over your sternum so gently you barely felt it. He continued over your neck and over your features settling on caressing your wet cheek, letting his hand stay there.

Him touching you softly and intimately terrified you even more instead of calming you down. It felt eerie and unsettling in so many ways you couldn't explain. Nonetheless, you didn't know why you weren't fighting him. Your body was still weak from yesterday but you were a Celestial God, for Archons' sake. Yet, you sat there obediently, being too scared to even blink, body locked in place. You'd doubt you were even breathing if you didn't see your own chest unsteadily rising and falling as the masked man's hand trailed over it.

You couldn't help but hate yourself over your weakness and over the fact you found yourself praying for someone to save you. Without intending to, your mind drifted over to the thought of calling out for help; Zhongli, Xiao and even Childe. The fear inside you was all-consuming and overwhelming you didn't even realise your lips were moving with barely any sound coming out but it did make the masked man's hand pause in its ministrations.

It barely registered in your mind that you were whispering Xiao's name.

You could feel his irritation through the way he gripped your face, squeezing your cheeks roughly and getting even closer, "I will be back for you." Before your mind could even comprehend what he'd said, the masked man disappeared in the blink of an eye, window left open as the cold early morning air seeped in but you couldn't even feel it. Your body felt numb yet hot and cold at the same time.

The moment he was gone, you could finally breathe easier and think clearer. Why was he here again? What did he even want? He already had your heart, which basically meant he had all your power in his very hands, so what else could you possibly have left to give? Your hands trembled as anxiety welled up in your chest.