Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationship:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2020-07-19
Words:
542
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
28
Kudos:
261
Bookmarks:
37
Hits:
1,277

a wavering shade

Summary:

Sometimes, images from the past will linger in his mind. Certain sounds. Flavors. Feelings? He vaguely remembers that they are referred to as memories. The touch of a cool hand. An ethereal melody. Guqin and dizi. Master Wei and Master Lan.

Or: Wen Ning embraces death a lot easier than he had ever imagined he could.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Wen Ning embraces death a lot easier than he had ever imagined he could. It wraps around him like a cloak made of shadows and starlight, leaves his consciousness floating in a vast expanse that cannot be described as anything other than Elsewhere.

Here, time does not exist. Here, Wen Ning finds he can inhabit multiple realms at once. He's both the shadow of an ancient, gnarled lemon tree on a bright summer's day and the creeping darkness that swallows a forgotten planet millions of lightyears away. He’s in the recesses of the deepest, darkest underwater trenches — he is the deepest, darkest trenches.

He exists. And his consciousness grows — ever expanding, ever hungry.

Sometimes, in the most arbitrary of moments, a million whispering voices fill Wen Ning's mind, chattering over each other in an incomprehensible garble that should be intuitive, but isn't. There are others like him, he knows, others out there in the creeping darkness, slipping between the planes as easily as tea pouring into a cup.

Tea? Cup? Pouring? These concepts used to hold meaning.

Tea.

Cup.

Pouring.

In the rarest of moments, a spark of human understanding reignites in him and he remembers.

Remembers?

Sometimes, images from the past will linger in his mind. Certain sounds. Flavors. Feelings? He vaguely remembers that they are referred to as memories. The touch of a cool hand. An ethereal melody. Guqin and dizi. Master Wei and Master Lan.

— Wei Ying and Lan Zhan now; what use does a being like Wen Ning have for such trivial formalities? —

A shade of his former self balks at that thought — respect, it whispers, horrified. Respect. Honor. Not trivial; never trivial.

Wen Ning's form shudders with an affirmative hum, and he defers to that wavering shade hiding in the farthest depths of his consciousness. Master Wei. Master Lan. It feels right, he admits. It feels as natural as the way he dips from one plane to the next.

It's natural, the way he gravitates toward his original plane, the one he had spent time in his corporeal form. The one he had been born, and lived, and died in. The one with Master Wei and Master Lan.

It's also natural, the way Wen Ning inhabits their shadows, the way he brushes against the both of them with shadowy tendrils when they are otherwise preoccupied. Master Lan's mind is ice and snowflakes, lace and ribbon, rules and poems. Master Wei's mind is the crackling of a roaring fire, sparks of genius, the undeniable warmth of home.

Master Lan is the one who notices first. Wen Ning can feel his sharp and steady gaze on the lengthening shadows under Wen Ning's control. He does not smile. He does not frown, either. He merely watches, curious, as Wen Ning's shadows bend the laws of nature in greeting.

Master Lan is the one who notices first; Master Wei is the one who speaks to him first — as is the way of Master Lan and Master Wei, even back when Wen Ning had inhabited a human form.

"You're a curious thing, aren't you?" Master Wei murmurs one day — what are days? — as he leans forward, peering at a shadow Wen Ning has decided to inhabit.

Wen Ning vibrates.

Master Wei smiles.

Notes:

this is part of a verse about exploring 'human emotions' when you very much do not feel like a person but i don't know if i'll ever have the attention span to play with it so! for now, a snack. perhaps later, a meal <3

talk to me on twitter!