#fushe

Now to begin, some context– Frieren (STAY WITH ME COMRADES) from Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is an elf, ergo she has an incredibly long lifespan and has trouble grasping the significance of human emotions and the human concept of time. Fern is her human apprentice and was fostered by a man who was Frieren's adventuring companion in his youth. By the time he adopts Fern, he is an elderly man, and passes with age. 

Back to Frieren– one of her companions from her adventuring party was a man named Himmel, who was in love with her. He dies without expressing this and she grieves because she realises she never took the time to understand him the way he did her. 

The Frieren/Himmel dynamic is therefore very different from the Fern/Heiter one (Heiter is the old man) although they do have notable parallels (and this is where it gets fun, pay attention please please.)

So Frieren and Fern are both the less experienced parties in their dynamics for different reasons– Frieren's reason is that she's over a thousand years old and so has difficulty understanding humans (Himmel). Fern's reason is that she was very young when Heiter took her in, so there's two things to consider– one, he is her parental/authority figure and two, she feels as though she owes him for taking her in.

And every single one of these dynamics is applicable to Xiao and his siblings in one way or another (for convenience's sake I'll be using their EN names.) 

Okay some more Frieren (please don't smack me, I promise we're getting to Xiao). To put it very briefly, in an episode, Frieren and Fern are travelling through the woods. There is a monster in the woods called the Einsam. It kills people by mimicking their dead loved ones and it does this by using the memories and perceptions of the people whose loved ones it mimics. This is relevant. (To explain a little better: if Xiao died and the Einsam was trying to kill you by taking on his appearance, it would use two things– one, your memories of him and two, what you thought of him as/how you perceived him. It will do the same things that you think Xiao would do. To trick you, it would act the way YOU think Xiao would act.)

When Himmel's mimic confronts Frieren, instead of tricking her, it tells her to strike him down. This is because Frieren knows Himmel well enough (without realising that she does) that: if Himmel's dead and an Einsam is using her memories -> the Himmel she knew would not want to see her come to harm (although she still does not process that he was in love with her. This is also relevant. She remembers him clearly but often does not understand the deeper implications behind his actions. You can compare this to memorizing a poem but not understanding the metaphor.) -> the Einsam will tell her to kill it because that is what the real, living Himmel would do. She knows him without realising she does.

When the Einsam turns into Heiter and comes after Fern though, it picks up the Heiter from her memories– and her memories are full of yearning. She wishes he were alive. She wishes she could have expressed her love and gratitude for him better. She wishes he could tell her again and again that he was proud of her. And so when 'he' appears before her, 'he' reminisces with her and tells her things she wishes she could hear him say.

This is because Fern does not know Heiter as objectively and fully as Frieren knew Himmel, because Frieren and Himmel were more or less equals. Heiter was however a parent to Fern, and so she respected him greatly -> and so this skews her perception of him -> and so he doesn't do what the actual, living Heiter would have done, which is ask her to kill him.

Enter Xiao, because now you have to wonder– if it was Xiao travelling through the woods, and Einsams in the forms of his siblings were to ambush him, what would he have done? (STAY WITH ME)

I would love to discuss each Yaksha at length, but we unfortunately know little about them, and only really enough about Bosacius. But we know enough about Xiao to contemplate, thankfully.

I personally think Xiao would get tricked, but I'll argue for both sides so you can tell me what you think.

Xiao’s life prior to Zhongli finding him was real, actual hell, with an explicit focus on the loss of his autonomy, as someone servile and we see this everywhere in this character (especially in him denying himself personhood and making himself into a weapon for slaughter.) He was the slave of a cruel god, he was not allowed to love, he wasn't allowed to think or make decisions of his own, find his own morality or personhood because she pulled the strings on all fronts. He was taught that only power is strength, that it is what makes up the stuff of dreams. We can make a few more inferences with this– Xiao eats snow, which alludes to him being so hungry he filled his belly with whatever he could. That combined with the fact that the cruel god used him to swallow the dreams of the innocent for her means she had complete control over even what he ate. I need to emphasise this because we see that Xiao was not allowed to be a person– he was not allowed to learn from life, he knew only what his master taught him. This is why he is so incredibly loyal to Zhongli, because Zhongli set him free and implicitly yet firmly (and sometimes even explicitly) emphasizes to Xiao every chance he gets that he was always free to make his own decisions, that they are equals now, that Xiao owes him nothing anymore. 

This is important because in the flashbacks we see of Xiao with his siblings, he is visibly comfortable, and in matters where his siblings are concerned he gives himself autonomy, even when it goes against Zhongli’s initial decisions (which is MONUMENTAL.) Look at the Perilous Trail cutscene for (our only) example–

“This trip may be dangerous… yet you insist on going.”

And instead of refuting his accomplishments and making himself into a weapon as he always does, he insists on going to look for his brother, which is huge. And for once, he uses his own achievements to respectfully argue with Zhongli and give himself leverage and autonomy in their disagreement. This is despite the fact that he warns even the Traveller to never, ever even speak ill of him.

Anyway, back to the Perilous Trail cutscene-

(Looking straight at Zhongli.) “I have guarded this place for several hundred years.” (Glances lower.) “Only to seek the nameless yaksha do I request your approval.”

This one moment is so important because it also illustrates that although Xiao always, as a rule, leaps at the worst possible scenario to contend with and refuses to hope for anything (the conversation he has with Traveller at the end of Perilous Trail, by Pervases’ temple, confirms this in a very obvious Paimon-spoonfeeding-you type of way), he still he chooses to dare to hope that his brother is alive, and breaks his own heart all over again. For a chance at meeting his corrupted brother. We find out midway through the quest that Bosacius is dead, but you have to stop to wonder– what did Xiao even plan on doing in the hypothetical scenario that he did find his deranged, traumatized brother? Bring him back to the Inn? Make him stay at Jueyun Karst? Bosacius was the marshall of the generals– if he decided to cause ruin and destruction Xiao wouldn’t be able to do much to stop him– and even as he’s fighting the Chasm’s illusion of Bosacius, he’s on the defensive and begs ‘Bosacius’ to come to his senses, to remember that it’s him, Alatus.

Yet he still goes, and despite his thousands of years of experience, the Chasm tricks him into believing that it is in fact his brother.

And Xiao believes it. 

With his siblings, we see Xiao sit with a relaxed posture, although he’s shown to be seated a little apart at times. Even then, they surround him with laughter and mischief as he looks on. He does not leave.

Despite being enslaved and tortured by presumably a sleep god/dream god, we see him be lulled into a deep sleep– so deep that he does not awaken as Bonanus and Menogias laugh, and Indarius cries out in protest as Bosacius draws all over Xiao's face in wet, cold ink.

When the subject of his siblings crops up in conversation at the end of Perilous Trail (by Pervases’ temple), he remembers what his siblings said with startling clarity, and quotes them verbatim. He remembers their personalities and desires clearly and is full of praise for them (despite most of them dying over a thousand years ago– Bosacius shows up 500 years ago after a long time, after he had run away due to his Karmic Debts years prior. We know this because no one has celebrated his birthday in a thousand years, according to his 2020 birthday message.)

The CN version of this especially makes me a little weepy because of the way the VA says their names, with such tenderness– “Fana, Minu, Yingda…” but I digress.

What I’m trying to say is– he loved them so much. They did more for him than can fully be articulated. Stealing what @hhhecates said sometime back because they’ve said it so well–

And so, after their loss you’re left a Xiao that has only memories to console him, memories that he keeps close to his heart and reminisces over frequently, if his recollections being so precise is any indication. So here’s what I think.

Time makes fools out of everyone– the nature of grief is to think back on what you’ve lost, and in its absence, your mind makes the subject of your losses even sweeter. We already know a few things about Xiao that align him nicely with the Fern route– A, he remembers his siblings with crystal clarity. B, the things they did for him CANNOT ever be overstated– they quite literally helped them find his personhood and helped them feel safe with himself. They modeled stability for him. This is why he feels as though he owes them a great deal– in his mind, he puts them on a pedestal, and we’ve seen this attitude directed largely at Bosacius, since he was Xiao’s superior as well as his older brother. C, this combined with him continuously minimizing his achievements and kindness in the name of duty results in Xiao having a functional dynamic with his siblings in reality, whilst simultaneously having an unequal dynamic in his own mind– we never see Xiao credit himself with something he may have done for them, we only see his thanks directed towards them. And D, they’re dead. He grieves them. He misses them desperately and feels immense guilt for being the only one that lived.

So in the unfortunate, completely hypothetical scenario that he comes across an Einsam, I think he’d make them a laughably easy meal.

It would not be difficult at all– he’d provide them with easily found, very clear memories. The monsters would instantly tap into his yearning, would instantly assume the glorified versions of his siblings in his mind’s eye. I think if Xiao went in knowing what was coming, he’d be heartbroken but have the mental fortitude to fight it. If he goes into the situation unknowingly and sees them all of a sudden, I think he would instantly make himself vulnerable, because that is what grief does to you. (Nearly all my sources are Perilous Trail, sob.)

What I wonder about is also– what would 'his siblings' say to him? I personally don’t think Xiao ever doubted their love for him– the way he speaks to ‘Bosacius’ reeks of dogged determination and confusion– why is his brother attacking him?

I do think they’d tell him it’s alright to be alive though, and to have fun without them. Something about them always being with him and finding peace in knowing he is well and then– chomp chomp, I guess.

The counterargument is that time may sweeten his memories in a different direction– he may instead glamorize them into being more selfless than they actually were -> so his memories would make his siblings saintlike to the Einsams -> and the Einsams would ask Xiao to kill them, because it is the Right Thing To Do.