[The moment Guangyao presses his face down into his shoulder, Huaisang's mind mercifully goes blank. Not entirely - the overwhelming screaming panic is still there - but he hasn't the luxury or the opportunity to think of anything else but clinging to Guangyao and not looking up, not even when he feels their abrupt turn and knows they're about to connect with the mirror, and he supposes if he must live the rest of his life brutally scared by glass shards, it will be better to have the evidence on his back than on his face—
And then they're out. And then they're on solid ground, and he wobbles on his own two feet again and sinks to the pavement, his legs sick and tired of cooperating, heedless of the people around them. He truly doesn't look at them at all, gaze transfixed on Guangyao the moment they stop. Guangyao bleeding from the mouth, the utter lack of spiritual strength left in his body, his eyes— it's the eyes, ultimately, that leave Huaisang stricken and frozen where he sits.
After all, he remembers with gruesome clarity when those same bloodshot eyes stared out at him from Nie Mingjue's face, when his beloved da-ge hardly recognized him, when he collapsed to the ground in a heap of madness and ghoulish wrongness. He knows these eyes; to see them gaze out at him again from Guangyao's face this time bends something in him; he can't move for the dead weight in his limbs, the drumming heartbeat in his ears. Time itself seems to hold its breath, as far as Huaisang is aware, even as a few of the patrons of The Red inch closer to them, to see what these two fellows and the flying sword are even doing. The thing in Huaisang's heart bends and bends, paralyzing him from doing a damned thing—
Then Guangyao slides to the ground and stills, and the thing snaps; Huaisang's limbs move again all at once, scrambling on hand and knee to the collapsed form of Guangyao and gripping futilely at his clothes with a strangled noise of horror escaping his lips, that this is happening again. He thinks not of, hm, circumstances - nothing but the way Guangyao has put himself through this for Huaisang, and no matter what sick dread lives in the pit of his stomach and hungers for comeuppance, he— he can't—
Huaisang will not watch another brother qi deviate and die, not today.
The next hour or so is a blur of frantically flagging down Trench locals to fucking help him, and maybe it's the eventual way he stops saying please and starts saying now that does it, but Huaisang gets Guangyao into a room, into a bed, and shuts the door on the beleaguered local trying to ask him another question. In the quiet he stands with his shoulders pressed back against the door, dares to think, and quickly stops doing that.
He exhales. He takes a step towards the bed where Guangyao lays, pale and sallow and still alive, and trips— Huaisang stoops to pick Guangyao's hat up off the floor and shuffles the rest of the way over.]
San-ge...?
[...Well, he can wait. He perches on the corner of the bed to do just that. He has not yet allowed himself to do any thinking, still.]
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And then they're out. And then they're on solid ground, and he wobbles on his own two feet again and sinks to the pavement, his legs sick and tired of cooperating, heedless of the people around them. He truly doesn't look at them at all, gaze transfixed on Guangyao the moment they stop. Guangyao bleeding from the mouth, the utter lack of spiritual strength left in his body, his eyes— it's the eyes, ultimately, that leave Huaisang stricken and frozen where he sits.
After all, he remembers with gruesome clarity when those same bloodshot eyes stared out at him from Nie Mingjue's face, when his beloved da-ge hardly recognized him, when he collapsed to the ground in a heap of madness and ghoulish wrongness. He knows these eyes; to see them gaze out at him again from Guangyao's face this time bends something in him; he can't move for the dead weight in his limbs, the drumming heartbeat in his ears. Time itself seems to hold its breath, as far as Huaisang is aware, even as a few of the patrons of The Red inch closer to them, to see what these two fellows and the flying sword are even doing. The thing in Huaisang's heart bends and bends, paralyzing him from doing a damned thing—
Then Guangyao slides to the ground and stills, and the thing snaps; Huaisang's limbs move again all at once, scrambling on hand and knee to the collapsed form of Guangyao and gripping futilely at his clothes with a strangled noise of horror escaping his lips, that this is happening again. He thinks not of, hm, circumstances - nothing but the way Guangyao has put himself through this for Huaisang, and no matter what sick dread lives in the pit of his stomach and hungers for comeuppance, he— he can't—
Huaisang will not watch another brother qi deviate and die, not today.
The next hour or so is a blur of frantically flagging down Trench locals to fucking help him, and maybe it's the eventual way he stops saying please and starts saying now that does it, but Huaisang gets Guangyao into a room, into a bed, and shuts the door on the beleaguered local trying to ask him another question. In the quiet he stands with his shoulders pressed back against the door, dares to think, and quickly stops doing that.
He exhales. He takes a step towards the bed where Guangyao lays, pale and sallow and still alive, and trips— Huaisang stoops to pick Guangyao's hat up off the floor and shuffles the rest of the way over.]
San-ge...?
[...Well, he can wait. He perches on the corner of the bed to do just that. He has not yet allowed himself to do any thinking, still.]