★Twisted Wishes★ | Genshin x Twisted Wonderland

💚Xiao x Silver💚

Scenario: Xiao spent the night patrolling the forest around the school.

Lying at the bottom of a ditch, cheek pressed against a patch of clover, with black blood oozing from several scratches on his arms, Xiao allowed himself a brief moment of weakness.

Closing his eyes, he wished fervently for some god, somewhere—it didn't have to be an Archon—to strike him down. Kill him. End his pain right now.

No such luck. Xiao opened his eyes. Okay. Now it's time to get up. Because for someone like him, even the peace of death was a luxury he didn't deserve.

With scraped fingers, he felt his leg and stifled a sharp gasp of pain. Twisted or broken? Broken, probably.

Careless. He'd been far too careless that night. Taken on too many phantoms at once, used up too much energy. In addition to his wounds, he could feel the karmic debt weighing him down, telling him to lie down and succumb.

Which he wasn't going to do.

Of the many activities Xiao considered completely useless, sleeping was the predominant one. Not only did you let down your guard, allowing enemies an easy target, but you wasted hours doing nothing. He didn't understand the mortal obsession with it.

Gritting his teeth, Xiao forced himself to stand, using a gnarled branch lying nearby to push his body up, and took a few uneasy steps forward. It hurt, but not more than usual.

A few steps later, Xiao could no longer ignore the pounding in his head. His world had shrunk to a tiny, dense core of pain, a thousand cruel stars laughing at him from above. His eyes blurred with pain; he couldn't see straight. By now, he knew, without a doubt, that he wouldn't make it to the school. If the monsters didn't finish him off first, his injuries would.

For the first time, he wished someone were there to help him. Save him. Someone, anyone...

And then, like a mirage, 'someone' was there, standing at the edge of the clearing like a bright angel. Xiao recognized the soft features and hair shining like snow in the winter.

Xiao managed to croak, "Silver," a single word. Normally, Malleus Draconia's unattentive retainer was hardly his favorite person at Night Raven College. Right now, though, he could care less who it was—he was just relieved to be found.

Silver ran to Xiao's side, his usual dazed expression replaced by alarm. Narrowed in dismay, his eyes looked like chips of crystal. This expression, Xiao decided through a haze of pain, suits him. He hardly knew what he was thinking—he must be going delirious.

"Xiao—how—never mind. Lean on me." Silver extended his arm, friendly despite the fact that he and Xiao had never spoken to each other.

Xiao's first instinct was to shout, No! Stay away! and bolt in the opposite direction. But he felt too tired to shout, and running was out of the question when every step sent pain searing up his leg.

Grudgingly, Xiao slipped his arm around Silver's shoulders, which were surprisingly sturdy for someone who spent so much time sleeping. And unimportant. Utterly irrelevant.

In ragged silence, punctuated by the occasional cough from Xiao, they continued through the forest until the shadows made it too difficult to see the roots and branches in their way, and Silver was practically dragging Xiao along. But they couldn't stop now. There were too many monsters to fight, too many people to save. Too many years' worth of slaughter to atone for. He couldn't stop...

"Xiao, let's stop," Silver said, for the fourth time.

For a moment longer, Xiao tried to forge on, but Silver held him back and spoke, his usually-mild tone sharp. "We're stopping, Xiao. You can't keep going in this condition."