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If someone had asked a younger Wen Ning what a new beginning had been for him, he would’ve probably thought of a 15-year-old him at Qishan, of a bright voice cheering him on and complimenting his archery skills even after he failed to deliver, of a warm smile and a loud laugh that prickled under his skin and made his face heat up.
Wei-Gongzi had been his start, the beginning of a set of feelings that were new and foreign to him, but that Wen Ning welcomed with blushing cheeks and a roaring heart and that he cradled carefully, storing them safely inside his chest.
Wei-Gongzi was nice to him and he was vivid, and although Wen Ning was too shy to say or try anything at the time, he had allowed himself to dream, had had no problems letting his innocent and enamoured mind imagine that maybe, maybe it could have been the beginning of something. In his heart, he had wished.
Later, Wen Ning had understood that there’s never just one beginning. Life (and not) could always come with a new one right behind the corner, and it wasn’t always a choice. He also learned, both from first-hand experience and from observing what happened around him, that new beginnings didn’t always mean something positive.
The golden core transplant. A new beginning that Wei-Gongzi had chosen to give to Sect Leader Jiang without consulting his brother, without any intention of ever letting anyone else outside of A-Jie and Wen Ning know. Even if for Wei-Gongzi it meant staying awake for two days and holding back screams while A-Jie performed the unimaginably painful surgery and Wen Ning held him in place and supported his weight from behind, pupils blown and scared. Even if it meant that his own new beginning would be the one of a cultivator without a core, of having to learn to live without a part of him he had spent all his life until that point training and strengthening, of finding alternative ways to compensate.
Demonic cultivation was one of Wei-Gongzi new beginnings as well, he reasoned.
It was almost amusing how it was also how he had been brought back, waking up from that endless black to find himself in the Burial Mounds to Wei-Gongzi playing some music (to help him regain consciousness and suppress his resentful energy, he later learned) along with Lan-er Gongzi, to his A-Jie and to the remnants of the Wens. Probably his biggest new beginning, so linked to one of Wei-Gongzi’s. 15-year-old himself, clueless of the rest, would have been extremely delighted to hear it.
The time in Yiling had been another nice start. He had his family, his sister, A-Yuan, Granny Wen, Fourth Uncle, and he had Wei-Gongzi. He didn’t have a pulse anymore, but he still had a life, in a way. His heart had stopped beating, but he found that the bundle of feelings he had once carefully stored beside it had remained just the same, not deterred by the body it belonged to having lost its living breath. And for a while, it was good.
It had been a bit difficult at times, when it wasn’t easy to grow crops in a soil impregnated with that much resentful energy like the one of the Burial Mounds, or when the wood around them wasn’t the right kind to build with and he had to watch from his unaffected-by-the-cold body how his family sometimes shivered after a draft of air sneaked between the cracks in the walls during the night. It was difficult for him to watch as he didn’t feel any of it, so he had tried to make use of his condition to help as much as he could.
His rigid muscles and stiff movements, no longer able to be delicate like he had known how to be at times in the past (although he had always been quite clumsy anyway) weren’t fit for planting and taking care of the crops, but there were other things he could do. Not needing to rest or eat for energy meant that he could spare others the heaviest labours, and that he didn’t have to take for himself some food that the rest of his family could have eaten. Not needing to sleep meant that he could watch over them during the night and revive the fire when it dwindled, or sit in front of a particular crack in the wall if the air coming from it seemed to bother the others.
And of course, he was there to help Wei-Gongzi. He was ready to follow him anywhere, running to his side as soon as Wei-Gongzi as much as called his name, feeling happy and eager to do something for him every time he did. Like a puppy in love, that’s how was Yiling Laouzu’s Wen dog, the feared Ghost General, the terrible fierce corpse that killed Jin Zixuan.
If his body still allowed him to, Wen Ning would have grimaced.
A-Jie and him turning themselves in to the Lanling Jin Sect was supposed to be a new beginning, another chance given to Wei-Gongzi and the rest of their family. One gifted without choice, a new beginning that came with pain. Like the golden core transplant he had witnessed years prior. A part of him hopelessly hoped that despite the odds, just like the core transplant, it could work.
He resented the missing memories, how he only remembered A-Jie holding his hand as they approached Carp Tower, Lan-er Gongzi trying to speak up in their defense, wanting to help them. (How could he have forgotten that part? After Wei-Gongzi, it was a first.) From then on, it was a blur, until he regained his senses, saw A-Jie for the last time as she was taken away, and he was imprisoned.
That moment, for once, felt like the end.
But after so much time in a dark place (thirteen years, he had come to learn later) a new beginning had happened, once again, after he had almost forgotten how it felt.
He had followed the pull of a familiar music, the call of demonic cultivation coming at first from the Mo Village, then from Dafan Mountain, in an emotionless daze through which he had picked and placed the pieces together at a later time.
After Wei-Gongzi had removed the two long nails from his head and he had regained consciousness, recognising who was standing before him (even if Wei-Gongzi was in a new body. How could Wen Ning have not recognised him?), it made sense to him. The pull. Why, despite not being in himself because of the nails, he had felt the impelling urge to reach that music.
Because that new beginning wasn’t properly his’, not mainly. It all depended on the soul coming back to life in Mo Xuanyu’s body.
Him, so linked to Wei-Gongzi that he had been brought to find him again after what was probably Wei-Gongzi’s biggest new beginning. 15-year-old him would have blushed fiercely if someone had told him that was going to happen in the future, and would have spent days daydreaming about what the situation would have been. Current him couldn’t blush anymore.
Then, there had been Lan-er Gongzi. He didn’t know when it had started, but the push and the kick a drunk Lan-er Gongzi had reserved for him the two times he had found him talking to Wei-Gongzi while he was still in a drunken daze had told Wen Ning there was something there. It seemed to be jealousy, and it didn’t take him much to figure out that Lan-er Gongzi had had, whether recently or not he didn’t know, a beginning of recognising his own feelings for Wei-Gongzi as well, just like 15-year-old him had.
Except that Lan-er Gongzi actually had a chance, he was alive, for one.
So he watched from the side, still not saying or trying anything (not that he would have anway, much less now than when he was young) but not leaving either, he could never have.
He followed them, helping again as much as he could, and watched as new beginnings kept coming, both for him and around him.
Discovering that Lan Sizhui was really A-yuan after he had thought for all those years that everyone in his family had died, for one. If he could have, he would have burst into tears when he found out. After, listening to Sizhui telling stories of how Lan-er Gongzi had raised him that depicted the second jade of Gusu as much softer than most people would have expected, Wen Ning had only felt a bigger respect and a newfound gratitude peak their heads out from inside his chest. (If they were placed suspiciously close to his ever-present bundle of feelings for Wei-Gongzi, he didn’t notice yet at the time.)
Seeing the rest of the cultivation trying to get back into a rhythm after everything that went down in the Guanyin temple, with new views on who was evil and who was good to get used to.
Wei-Gongzi’s and Lan-er Gongzi’s getting married. Another new beginning that he had observed from the outside since it didn’t involve him, but that this time he couldn’t help but feel like he had to pay close attention to. ‘It doesn’t concern you’ a small voice in his head told him, but after having left his hopeless hoping in his now past life, he ignored it, in the same way he brushed off and didn’t stop to think about the even smaller ‘Wouldn’t be nice if it did, though?’ that another part of his brain had supplied him with.
Staying to live in Cloud Recesses, accompanying Sizhui and the other juniors on night hunts, felt like the final new beginning. Where he was going to remain at, it felt like a permanent place until something happened that would have meant he had to leave. He didn’t see such an event in the near future, and he couldn’t complain, he was close to everyone he cared about. It was good, and it was for sure good enough for him, for what he felt like he could’ve asked for. It was good.
He would have never expected that it could have been better.
But after a while, Wei-Gongzi seemed to become more touchy with him, hands on his shoulders, on the small of his back to lead him somewhere, fixing his hair, that he could feel way less than he would’ve been able to when alive, but that made his unable-to-blush skin burn nonetheless, because they unmistakably lingered. He stiffened even more and moved away the first few times, looking at Lan-er Gongzi nervously, since he was always there when they happened. (Him and Wei-Gongzi were a couple difficult to see one apart from the other after all, they were and came as a pair.) But, surprisingly, Lan-er Gongzi didn’t seem jealous of the touches at all, despite having kicked Wen Ning in the past for even as much as talking with Wei-Gongzi. He had been drunk those times, yes, but still.
This time, on the contrary, Lan-er Gongzi looked at the two of them interacting with quiet affection that seemed to not only be reserved to Wei-Gongzi, and not even a hint of anything negative could be seen in his eyes. Still weary at the lack of reaction, Wen Ning allowed himself to relax slightly when Lan-er Gongzi started to interact more with him as well. Allowing him to stay while he played the guqin for his husband, giving him new robes to replace the thorn ones he wore since long before. Sometimes, he had smiled at him and Wen Ning had felt it, how the hidden bundle in his chest seemed to be bigger now, containing more than what he had always been used to. Since when? had it been a gradual thing?
As time went on the touches, the attentions towards him by the two seemed to only increase, adding more and more fuel to the inside of his ribcage and setting it ablaze every time. It was then that Wen Ning, who thought he had left wishing behind after his heart had stopped beating, who thought he had reached his last new beginning and that nothing would’ve changed for him after that point, left himself hope for one more.