From Earth to Heaven, From Heaven to Earth (TGCF HuLian)

Chapter 5 Of Things Unknown

At first Wu Ming can't believe his own senses. Time seems to slow around him, flowing backward until he's not a savage ghost already a decade dead but a living child, small from hunger and neglect, clutched safe in the arms of the only person who has ever found him worth loving. There is no way that this can be real. It's a hallucination, an illusion, a trick or a trap or a wish or or...

How can his highness be here?

How can he have appeared to catch Wu Ming just as he did all those years ago?

How can he have saved him yet again?

There's just no way that this can be real.

...And yet...

And yet some deep central part of him is ringing like a struck gong and it knows, oh it knows. This is his prince, his Dianxia, his god. Wu Ming would know him anywhere.

And so, head spinning in utter shock and confusion, Wu Ming lets himself be carried, lets himself sink into that warm safe memory, and for just a moment he is at peace.

Then Xie Lian lands lightly back on the snowy ground, Wu Ming in his arms, and looks down at the ghost in his arms and Wu Ming is caught by those beautiful golden eyes, eyes which hold no fear and no hatred and no disgust, only, warmth and worry and Wu Ming feels his dead heart attempting to beat again at the sight.

"Wu Ming? What's happened? What went wrong?"

The world seems to tilt and spin at the question. His highness sounds so... So concerned about Wu Ming, so unsurprised by the ghost's presents in Mount Tonglu, as though they parted only hours before...

"I- What?"

"Why did you fall? Did something go wrong? Did someone push you?" Something protective flickers in Dianxia's eyes and Wu Ming feels the color rise in his cheeks. Dianxia is asking what happened to him. Dianxia is speaking as though the thought of someone pushing Wu Ming bother's him. Dianxia is...

... Dianxia is /here/.

That's when it really hits him. His highness is really here. This is all real. He's found him again, no, rather, Dianxia has found him, Dianxia remembers him and he's found him and he's talking to him and holding him in his arms and and...

"W-would your highness put this one down?" He stumbles over his words, somehow unable to get his tongue around them any more than he can get his mind around what's happening.

"Ah, of course. Sorry." Wu Ming isn't sure what shocks him more, the sudden pain in his god's eyes or the 'sorry'. It's all so wrong. His highness shouldn't be apologizing to him, not for anything, not ever!

Xie Lian lowers Wu Ming gently to the ground then makes to step back but before he can the ghost catches his god's hand in his own, bowing over it as he sinks to his knees before his god.

"Your highness, forgive me."

He knows he's being presumptuous, knows that he's underserving, but he can't manage to resist. Just as when he was a child who clung to Xie Lian's robes with all that he had, Wu Ming just can't manage to let him go. He expects a sharp reprimand, for that perfect hand to be jerked from his, perhaps even a blow. What he does not expect is the soft sound of his highness's breath catching in his throat. What he does not expect is the feeling of his god's hand shaking in his own. What he does not expect is...

"Wu Ming, what are you doing?" There's so much emotion in his highness's voice, destress, and worry, and what sounds terribly like hope, and it steals the thoughts from his mind like it might steal the breath from mortal lungs.

"Your highness?" Wu Ming says it weakly, not sure what else to say.

"I..." Xie Lian starts than falters. He tugs weakly at the hand Wu Ming still holds, still bowed over, a black figure, a wreath of savage malice kneeling before a god all in white. There is an echo here, a memory, but this time the ghost kneels not on a night stained battle field but in the endless blankness of the snow and this time there are no masks between them.