Work Text:
That sound.
A flute. Poorly tuned, not the same, but unmistakeable.
The little flicker of self that Wen Ning had preserved, shielded through the endless dark, only interrupted by blindingly bright pain, stirred.
Someone was calling.
Not just someone, but a someone… a someone he knew.
He moved without controlling his movements, but that had become the usual. What was unusual was the restlessness stirring in his mind. Something, someone. Himself. A chance that he could be found, a fear of what it meant that he was still not in control.
Would he harm again? Kill?
He didn’t want to go. Don’t make him go. Stay in the dark. Stay where he wasn’t safe, but others would be. Please. Please. PLEASE.
But he was already out in the daylight. The sunlight burned. His eyes not under his control and so he could not squint, could not blink to shield them from the light.
Where was the music coming from?
Could it be him? Or was it the other?
They’d told him he’d died. That they’d all died. All because of him. Of them. The Yiling Patriarch and his Ghost General.
But if it wasn’t him then…
His body took the most direct route, quicker through the brush, through the trees, than it would be to follow the paths.
His chains rattled, the branches, a rustle as he moved through them, burst out, and suddenly…
An arm shattered under his feet.
An arm… Too large to be human… Made of stone?
Before him lay a boy, teenaged, golden Jin robes.
He tried not to think of the last time a Jin sect member had lain prone by his feet as flute music played, afraid it would make the bit of himself retreat, lose what little he had left.
But even as he felt a quiet gratitude that he seemed to be saving, not hurting, this boy, his body kept moving. Turned, spun – was that the living statue that had attacked his family as a child? No matter. It too had already shattered easily under his attack.
Talking. Shouting. Cries of fear, anger. Aimed at him.
As usual.
He wanted to leave. The bit of himself that was him, that felt like him rattled against the chains. Not those wrapping his body, but those chains of energy pouring out from the nails in his neck.
The chains held tight.
He wanted to leave, but his body stayed still. But at least… if he was still… then he couldn’t…
But the music played.
And after sixteen years, Wen Ning was once again compelled into this violent dance.
He felt the bones crack under a punch, a kick. Felt the expansion of a neck, clenched in his fist, as the boy tried desperately to breathe. These were innocents, some were children.
He knew, could recite, easily, the herbs, the instructions, the treatments that could help them recover from what he was doing. But he could not stop. Because he was not here as Wen Ning. Not here as Wen Qionglin of Dafan Mountain.
He was here as the Ghost General, a puppet when the music played.
The resentful energy that propelled him stirred angrily. Wen Ning fought. Fought against it. But those spirits were so many compared to his barely conscious, wavering, self. It had been hard enough to keep even that alive, but to fight this energy, with the flute’s song growing more and more agitated…
But the music changed.
It changed and the energy paused, confused, thrown for just long enough for Wen Ning, trapped inside his mind for over a decade, to push. To push against the spirits, against the nails, the chains.
To push until he realized just how familiar the notes were. Notes he had heard mournfully played from rooftops over what was probably the best year of his life, all things considered.
He knew who it must be who had summoned him.
And with that realization, the usual complex feelings arose. His affection for the man, concern, the confusion that this person was even still alive, the incessant, nagging question of why a friend would be so willing to control him like this, the arguments – some good, some bad – that responded with force to that question.
But more importantly than any of that, the flute music controlled the energy. And even if the energy controlled him in turn, was the force draining his own agency, right now that control meant that his body lowered this Lan disciple, let the little piece of him that was Wen Ning turn, see, confirm who exactly it was that was softening the resentful energy’s hold.
He wanted to go to him. To greet him – to ask… was anyone else left? Had there been any other survivors? Wen-popo? A-Yuan? Jiejie? Did he know?
He stepped forward, one foot, then another. Unsure whether it was the flute player who willed the action, or if Wen Ning had in this brief struggle won some small battle against the iron in his neck, that maybe for the first time in a very long time, what he wanted to do actually mattered.
The flute stopped. Wen Ning looked around.
He looked around.
He was sure. It had been him, just then, that had played some role in his body’s movements.
The flicker within him swelled, rejoicing, though he knew there was no external sign of this. The wisp of self not quite strong enough yet for that.
But the flute began again.
Go. It said. His body said in kind.
And perhaps he agreed. Perhaps not. Perhaps he would have left anyway. Perhaps he would have stayed.
But as Wen Ning made his way back, back towards the dark, those details didn’t matter so much.
What mattered was only two things. First, he now knew he may have a living ally – one who could fight these chains from the outside while he fought from within. But more importantly, he now knew that perhaps the whispers in the Jin dungeon, the news they’d communicated, had reminded him of constantly, in an effort to stoke his resentment – he knew that maybe not all of it had to be true. Maybe they could still be alive. His family might not all be gone.
And with this realization, the flicker grew. Expanded.
And Wen Ning, for the first time in a long while, hoped.