fel: let it be known that we passed hits of 6969. and i am so proud. Still unemployed and screaming because i need a job soon or fuck me am i right once i have to start paying my student loans. FUCK FUCK FUCK
Nobody ever addressed Wen Ning by his courtesy name. Nobody ever gave him the formality and dignity for most if not all of his life to be addressed as Wen Qionglin.
It stung to know this. It really did. It stung because he can remember his bullies and tormenters bringing up that his parents never even bothered giving him a courtesy name.
"You're just a fuckup so why would they bother."
"Be glad anyway says your name at all. You're just a screwup. A disgrace to the main family."
They're right. He knows they're right. He knows, but then his sister would pull him aside and tell him to grow a backbone. Prove them wrong.
"Of course, you have a courtesy name. Honestly, the fact you listen to such rubbish enough to let it bleed in your mind…" Wen Qing's voice trailing off in muttered frustration clicking her tongue.
"But... what if- what if I can't prove myself. What if I do end up a Crow?"
She didn't say anything, but she reached out and lightly smack his head as if to chide him for his stupidity.
The clan didn't talk about how Wen Ruohan had changed the sect when he took over. That before the idea of turning disciples into birds such a manner was ludicrous and cruel. Not to mention too many pointless as they had so many Crows at their beck and call. Their territories and subsects expanded yes but they had more than enough.
Still, people were complacent because it was a prosperous time and few were suffering. Their domain was doing well and why not expand that and keep growing? Why not show the world what they were missing?
And when people prove traitorous and difficult to handle use force to remind them there is only one sun.
That was how Wen Ning ended up born under a system where his own weakness will one day cost him his humanity. That was how Wen Ning ended up in a class meant to push and force the weak to get their cultivation level up to a point they could say they earned their humanity.
Tests and things they had to prove they could stand with the main family. Wen Ning was only ever able to occasionally prove he could shoot a bow.
He tried! He truly clawed and struggled his way to prove he was capable. He practiced till his palms bleed and his muscles tore but when in front of others he'd breakdown and only weakness remained. He wasn't exceptional but he was trying. He was always trying!
Wen Ning tried to be a cultivator and he tried to be a doctor. He tried to be anything but a crow because the thought of going through that scares him because he's seen the ones who change back. He's heard them ask for their feathers and beaks like being human was the real punishment.
He remembers when he was little that a tiny insurgence of a few sect members that they were gathered and made an example of during a banquet. Everyone watched including him as he tried not to think about the black makeup covering his face and crests marking his failures. He tried not to think as someone leaned over and pointed at the Crows on the ground some with feathers that weren't even perfectly black, "That's gonna be you. Just wait."
I know. I know I'm just a lowly Crow.
Everyone called him such. Everyone's eyes spoke that word.
But Wen Ning tried. He tried and fought to prove something- anything about him was not worthless like people would say. He tried and it didn't matter how much the people he loved said he had a kind heart if at the end of the day he couldn't keep it in a chest not covered in feathers.
He tried.
And tried.
And tried even as he would sit staring at his robes in the cage they called a dormitory for the other failures like him thinking it was pointless. Nobody even called him by name.
He wasn't even twenty when they said he'd be next. That come next discussion conference he'd been chosen to be the one they'd have as a prize.
"Congratulations Wen Qionlin."
He cried in his sister's arms asking what he did to deserve this. He's only eighteen. He still had time. He still could prove himself.
Wen Qing's lips were set firm and hard as she tightened her embrace, "I'm sorry. This is my fault."
Wen Ning would not get more from her but he heard that Wen Qing had feuded briefly with the main family over some policies that were being put in place. She called them rash and irresponsible. That they would only hurt their sect and more importantly her home in the long term but Wen Ruohan would have none of it.
Wen Qing was a doctor first and valued. She was needed but her brother and the rest of her family…
He got used to pecking the ground as they bullied him to act like a bird. Peck the ground and live with his hands bound. It wasn't necessary. No, it was cruel abuse to remind Wen Ning he deserved it. He deserved it.
I should have tried harder
Tears pouring down his face as he cuddled up to Wen Qing for what was likely the last time. "I can at least be a good Crow. I can at least do this."
"A-Ning, you are a good soul. No matter what shape."
When he'd come to live with Master Wei he had expected to let his mind slowly rot away in that body. Forget humanity and the memories and just be undead in a worse more conscious way. Even if his master was kind. Even if he cared.
Delaying the inevitable just hurts. One day he'd wake up a bird and no longer Wen Ning. One day he'd stop worrying about his fear of flying. That was his fate and he had learned to live with it. He'd been bad at being a human but even with these discolored feathers, he could be a good Crow.
Crows can't cry. They can't. Not with tears but they grieve in chirps and song and that was what he did.
It felt better than tears because tears, where sobs that piled in the throat and a slow suffocation as snot dripped down his nose, and water clogged his eyes. But these songs just let it out with a lightness that hurt but did not choke.
Flying with wings was so freeing and let him be anywhere and see anything. No sword and no fear of a lack of talent to stop him because all birds fly.
Words that struggled to leave his stuttering mouth weren't a problem in this form.
The complicated and hard aspects that held him back felt released and Wen Ning was oddly confident, and he felt sharper. More alive in a way that didn't expect. He didn't want to go back.
No matter what happened he never wanted to go back to the hell he suffered in as a human.
Even if he missed laughter and family. Even if he wanted to read and write. Even if he wanted to go back to studying medicine under Wen Qing.
Coward.
He's a coward afraid of what being a human is but can he be blamed when so much of being human just hurt? Was just suffering?
When Lotus Pier burned and they ended up in the safe arms of his sister he screamed. Because being human again would hurt him. Being a person again would destroy him.
He had worked hard to ignore what he missed and to take the blessing of what life as a Crow offered and when that seal undid itself and he sat staring at his own hands for the first time in what felt like years.
When Wen Ning realized what he had done and what he forgot he couldn't help turning to a messy string of apologizes.
"Sister, I'm sorry! I'm sorry that I didn't want to come back. I'm sorry I forgot what mattered."
Because Wen Ning forgot all the things he'd loved as a human in that form. He forgot how much holding a bow and shooting targets made him happy. He forgot the food he loved to eat. He forgot how just curling up under the covers was one of the best feelings.
Wen Ning forgot what made laughter wonderful.
He forgot that even as they suffered through war. Even as he was reminded why humans were awful and monstrous. Even as Master Wei's eyes burned with a bloodlust reserved for only a man desiring revenge when he talked of how he would make the Wen's pay for Lotus Pier.
For his brother.
Humans were ugly creatures with so many awful emotions that had become distant as a crow. Wen Ning struggled to understand revenge and war even while knowing what it was. What it invoked in the hearts of men.
He knew but was not a thing he wanted to see. Not a part of humanity he liked but understood it was a part of them. A part of what made humans human.
And the longer he stayed like this the more ashamed he felt for thinking life as a Crow was better if not deserved.
Wen Ning realized as he lived through war and heartache as a man that he was angry at the world and what it did to him. But more he was angry at himself for thinking it was right.
I deserve to be human
He deserved it and that was why even as the Lanling Jin sect tossed their family in chains-
Even as all of their forms and bodies were twisted from one animal to the next-
Even as Wen Ning lay dying in a ditch for trying to help his family he felt that he'd done something right. That by being proud of himself and feeling human he'd done something that both his family and Master Wei could be proud of.
Human. They're human and it's a messy horrid thing but they were going to stay that way because he knows that Master Wei will make it so.
Because he knows better than anyone how much this hurts
How much it is a struggle to hold these emotions in the broken cup they've become.
I am sorry we have to be such a burden on you
The next time Wen Ning opened his eyes it was with the unnatural sensation of death crawling through him. A feeling like he was wrong and while he could breathe the act was worthless. While he could blink there was no sensation of his eyes drying or pain in general. There was no taste or hunger. There was no warmth or bitter cold.
There was nothing. Nothing but his thoughts and the sights of Master Wei and his family greeted him. Wen Ning was supposed to be dead. He was supposed to be.
But he wasn't.
He was something in between that wasn't allowed in this world. An anomaly that was so unnatural in it's being because the dead should not rise whole but Master Wei, the madman, did it. He did it and Wen Ning couldn't help thinking about how awful this supposed Yiling Patriarch looked.
They had talked about in private out of earshot from everyone under the moon as Master Wei drank liquor and pretended it didn't taste like ash on the tongue. "It's a side effect of not having a golden core."
"It doesn't matter how strong I get and how many I consume. Because the spell that turned me was never removed and I have no core to guard my soul it's just going to keep eating away at my body until I'm just a monster."
Gills could be seen poking out from under his tangled hair that covered his neck in a waterfall of black and Wen Ning recognized that way those pupils dilated like a snake. It was always different what traits and how popped out when Master Wei had not consumed enough but it spoke volumes of the hell he'd been through.
"There must be something we can do. What if we found someone and did another transfer? If you had a core-"
"It's a part of my soul now. It's only going to die when I do. Besides, it's a matter of fate for people unlucky like us." It was quiet for a time until Master Wei spoke again, "All of us have been twisted too much to return to a normal world but I will make for all of a place you can live peacefully. I will give us a future."
It was easy to read that when Master Wei said to us while he did mean everyone he was thinking of the youngest among them. Of Wen Yuan who they all agreed deserved to live a human life.
"Do you truly not resent me for doing this to you?"
"Master Wei, you let me live again, and even if it isn't the same I learned to enjoy my time as a bird. A corpse is more convenient."
He truly meant it.
Wen Yuan held up a flower to him, "Wei Ge-ge says you give flowers to people you like. I decided I like you even though you're scary and smell bad."
Wen Ning couldn't deny that living in a state of perpetual rot gave him a particular odor but he tried hard to bathe regularly and use lots of oils!
Master Wei snickered and Wen Ning bent down to take it only for Wen Yuan to put in his hair, "Now people will know you're not scary."
It was moments like these that made him happy that despite everything he was alive.
He had watched Wen Qing die. He had watched them kill and stab her and the life leave her eyes.
The blood falling down and he wished he could cry but instead like a bird he let out a mournful string of notes. He wailed as a pain dug into him. The first pain he'd felt in so long.
It was not conventional pain of injury but a heartache as he felt his mind go numb and his body slowly freeze. As it all turned into a clouded fog and all that remained were people ordering him and locking him away in the dark.
As they prodded and messed with his body to see what made him work. If he could be replicated.
Those nails scratching at his lobes demanding he go against himself. Wen Ning wanted to die.
Even if there was no true pain. Even if he was mostly in a numb fog.
He wanted to be saved so it wouldn't span for eternity. So he would have more than a sleeplike fog. Even living in only his memories would have been better than this.
He sang his mournful notes in his chest even if it came as empty moans and grunts to his captors.
He sang and hoped he might be heard.
In that dark, with nothing, he waited for thirteen years till at last a voice he would always recognize rang out, "Wake up."
