applesaucedream | Can't Stand the Distance, Can't Dream Alone [open to all]

Current Music: Evening August 4/Morning August 5, 2013

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Can't Stand the Distance, Can't Dream Alone [open to all]

The sleeping rifties might have a difficult time realizing they're dreaming this evening, in part because tonight's dreams are atypically vivid, even compared to the rift's usual efforts. Perhaps that is because it's drawing so heavily from the memories of the dreamers, themselves, and using that information to recreate their home worlds in stunning detail. And that is the real reason the dreamers might not be eager to accept the unreality of the situation: the situation is one that many of them have been hoping for for months or even years. In their dreams tonight, the rifties are going home.

Perhaps they arrive in the same moment that they left. Perhaps months have passed at home, or they might even find themselves arriving before their departure point. But those are small details when compared to the overwhelming realization that they're back where they belong.

They're not alone. Many dreamers will find the rift has given them a companion for the return trip. Well, an uncomplicated return home is probably more than anyone could have hoped for, anyway. And for the unwitting visitor, perhaps another universal displacement will be easier to bear with the addition of a local guide.

[ooc: usual dream party rules apply; all are welcome, and dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. Also at the players' discretion: when their character arrives in their 'home universe,' and how many (if any) locals they'd want to run into.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The grinding whirr of the naquadah ring and the thunk of engaging chevrons is so sharp and familiar that for a moment Daniel can't find anything wrong with it. It feels completely natural, from the roaring vortical surge of blue-white as it storm-roars outward to the watery snap of the spiraling fluid energy kawoosh reshaping itself into the oscillating, rippling puddle. It only strikes him once he's been hurled through the shrieking tunnel of tearing space-time that he hasn't been through a stargate in weeks.

He gets no time to consider the incongruous timeline before the gate discharges him out on the other side in a far more turbulent exit than necessary; inertia is constant even through gate travel, even through the spaciotemporal fold between two artificial wormholes in separate coordinates of the galaxy. Yet the stargate ejects him at his destination violently and sends him hurtling onto the new planet in a torqued parabola. One shoulder glances off the raised dais but he manages to twist the awkward landing into a partial roll, avoiding injuries worse than simple bruising, then rights himself immediately and unclips the P-90 at his tac vest to bring it up defensively.

Daniel gets about thirty seconds to appreciate the old feel of the gun, disturbing in its familiarity, before his world detonates.

The dais gets rocked by a low, rumbling explosion, a deep and percussive force that sends fragments of debris pinwheeling in Daniel's direction. He ducks behind the DHD for cover, groping for the radio that apparently isn't there. A second impact - are those missiles or energy-based weapons or sonic-based technology he can't tell he can't tell there's too much happening - rocks the gate again, and before Daniel can consider dialing home a third blast smashes into the platform barely several meters away. No form of evasive maneuver would have been sufficient. He tumbles backwards off the dais and scrambles to get back to his feet

Threat assessment: alien planet, unknown coordinates, unknown assailants, explosions very very nearby. Force and magnitude of attack unknown. Gate unsafe.

Get to higher ground.

In the midst of all the explosions, barely moments before the gate closes, another man is thrown through. And he's clearly not there intentionally, judging by the fact he's wearing nothing but jogging bottoms and an open flannel shirt.

Last thing Seth remembers, he was in his apartment - doing what? Dozing off, maybe - and now, with no warning whatsoever, he's hurtling through the air, after a spectacularly hallucination-like light show. He lands roughly on his back on what is definitely stone, getting the wind knocked out of him.

And before he has even the slightest chance to orient himself or even get his breath back, something explodes, and Seth has to cover his face, curling around and attempting to get to his feet, figure out where he is, what the hell is going on.

Somewhere in the turbulence of the world detonating around him, the unmistakeable liquid compression as the stargate roughly disgorges a second figure rings out clearly between blasts. Immediately afterward, the gate shuts in its whooshing, dissipating pop of destabilized energy. Closed.

Daniel swivels to face the gate, brows drawn down in hard confusion. This man, this person, just showed up out of nowhere. Clearly not an offworlder, not from this planet anyway, very obviously a civilian - an unarmed, unprepared, completely defenseless civilian. What is he doing here?

Daniel ducks back reflexively as another rumbling salvo of projectiles shakes the bunker - bunker? - they're apparently in. He's rapidly gathering that these projectiles are missile-like in nature, and therefore will have a wider blast radius as opposed to an energy-based arsenal. Meaning increase of shrapnel. Meaning increase of general environmental danger. Meaning dialing Earth is not an option until he can draw that fire away.

He stacks together his priorities in an untidy bundle and grabs a quick breath.

First things first. Get himself and the unknown civilian out of the line of fire, and then they can work on dissecting circumstances.

Daniel surges forward, wraps fingers around the guy's arm, and hauls him upright.

"We gotta move!" He has no idea if the words make it past the next thundering growl of weapons fire. The ceiling of the bunker spits thick trails of dust at them in groaning warning. The structural integrity will soon be compromised.

There are no other targets in the bunker. Daniel is the target. Daniel and - possibly this other man, whoever he is. He looks Tau'ri, certainly, right down to the modern dress but this is not necessarily an indication of planetary origin.

"Move, move, come on!" He tugs at the other man, desperation making his grip and unidirectional drive far fiercer than it should be considering the civilian's obvious unpreparedness, but they're left with so few options here. It's move and find cover or die, and Daniel's in no rush to go through that again.

There's an additional, entirely unwelcome surge of fear as he is suddenly grabbed and shouted at, by someone very large and very strong and very much wielding a large gun, and this is just so many kinds of horrible. As if he needed to be pushed any further into panic.

It's pure instinct and muscle memory that makes him follow, stumbling a little but barely noticing the pain of hurrying barefoot over all this debris, and he's still barely able to draw breath or see because there's all this dust and shit in the air, and everything seems to be happening at once and his heart is thumping painfully in his chest and he thinks he recognises that voice, which. He doesn't understand. But it's probably the only thing stopping him from trying to pull away or run in the opposite direction, even with how his grip hurts.

Half-formed theories are flitting through his mind, like a terrorist attack, or some ridiculous Rift bollocks, but it's currently entirely impossible to think any of it through because he can barely keep on his feet and take in his immediate surroundings, much less form rational thought. There's stuff fighting to make itself known inside his head, stuff he does his very best to keep buried, stuff that makes him incapable of properly coping with what's going on around him, and he can't do that right now, he needs to be present, he needs to be alert, or else. Well, he has a distinct feeling he won't make it out alive otherwise.

Thankfully the civilian follows without significant struggle and Daniel's able to time their movement between the arrhythmic pulses of missiles striking reinforced steel so they can dart out from the bunker into a conjoined hallway.

"How the hell did you -?" Daniel begins as soon as they're moving down one of the narrow passageways perpendicular to this planet's evident gateroom. The build of the place, the architecture, it's all vaguely 1940's in aesthetic and construction.

The meaning of that evaluation, of this planet region's current ballistic conflict, makes itself horribly stark in Daniel's mind. The tense survival instinct dissolves into curdled dread. He knows this.

He gets little time to consider those implications before a hostile shout erupts in front of them. A figure opposite to them - a rebel, Daniel remembers distantly - raises a weapon, points it at the civilian with the clear intent to fire.

Without hesitation, Daniel empties his clip into the other man's chest.

It's not until they're out of the -- whatever room that was, and the man starts talking, that Seth realises holy shit.

Daniel's half-formed question barely has time to register in amongst all the other questions, like where are they and how did they get here and what's going on, and what's Daniel doing here, dressed in his military gear and armed. Has Seth gotten amnesia or something and lost three years of life, because this just does not mesh at all.

And they're in some sort of base, and there's no windows, and Seth just knows there's no way out, it's like he knows it in his bones, and there's this paralysing hopelessness that stifles and drowns all other thought.

Then someone else is there, and Seth doesn't have time to react at all, barely has time to look before the sharp, deafening sound of gunfire right next to him, and the man is dead, and Daniel killed him.

Seth stares at the lifeless body, horrified, frozen in place, unable to look away.

Jaw tight, Daniel steps over the corpse to duck his head out and peer down the corridor. Tegalus, he's remembering now. He's on Tegalus and he's cut off from Earth. Because of - well. Because.

"No one else is coming," he mutters, half to himself, loud enough for the civilian's benefit. "We're gonna have to go quick, this place isn't gonna hold up for much -"

The sentence crumbles when Daniel looks back, sees the paroxysmal, etched expression of horror on the other man's face, and he breathes out a low, stabilizing breath. So. Not military. Not even remotely. How the hell did this guy end up on the business end of a stargate?

"I know," he says, as soft and reassuring as he can make the words despite the undertone of urgency. "Believe me, I know. It's a lot, it really is, and I'm sorry. But we can't stay."

Again he grasps at the other man's wrist to pull him along. Navigation in these passages won't be easy, especially since they're subterranean as well as under constant heavy fire. The insurgents should ease off their bombardment once they realize they have a clear path to the stargate, however, but Daniel hopes that by then he and his unexpected charge will be far enough away that they won't be targets anymore.

It's not just the body, the sudden and violent change from 'person' to 'body', because Seth has dealt with that before. Not often, and not all that voluntarily, but he'd like to think he has a decent stomach for it. Or at least he used to, back when he was a bit more mentally and emotionally stable.

But it's seeing Daniel doing it, business-like and almost calm, seemingly unaffected by what he just did. That's the part that's really jarring. It makes him feel sick. He's just... he's so very clearly, obviously military, and Seth doesn't know how to deal with that, not when he has to see it first-hand.

It reminds him of that dream of Daniel breaking him out, how he killed a handful men with very little trouble. But that had been a dream, and Seth hadn't been properly aware of everything going on, not enough to properly react, or maybe the memories have just been dulled by waking up.

And there's a desperate hope that this is a dream too, because right now he has no other real theory, but usually when it occurs to him that it might be, he's able to tell. He's able to feel the difference. Whereas this feels... terribly vivid and vibrant and sharp.

It's a good thing Daniel is dragging him along rather than waiting for him to follow, because the reassurances are having a hard time making their way into his mind, and doing things like actually deciding to put one foot in front of the other right now, well, he's not sure if he could do it.

The man seems almost shell-shocked, and Daniel can't blame him. He's just been thrust probably millions of light years from his home straight into a potentially apocalyptic political-military dispute. The next flare of explosions causes the entire facility to shake; Daniel has to momentarily brace himself against the walls of the passage to establish his inertia. The dim yellow of the ceiling lights flicker ominously with the next distant, thumping round of loosed projectiles. The impact is lessening, growing more muffled the farther they progress.

"You have any idea how you got here?" Daniel tosses the question over one shoulder as he leads the civilian through the winding, angular network of hallways upon hallways, gaze raking uniform gray-green walls for any sign of a surface access hatch. "The gate really isn't supposed to, um - well, I take it you're, uh, you're not Tau'ri?"

Unless he is. There's no real way of knowing, seeing as the man hasn't uttered a word since coming through the gate. The situation isn't an easy one for anyone involved, however, much less an unintended third party who's gotten next to no context. Daniel's determination to get them out of this place before it collapses entirely lends a harsh, controlled edge of panic to each movement, to the tightness of his grip on the civilian's wrist, to the readjustment of a finger over the P-90's trigger release mechanism. Despite all of it, he can't help but be fairly forgiving of this guy's understandable if impractically prolonged reaction. To be thrust into the middle of this, no warning whatsoever would be disorienting enough for a trained SG team, much less an untrained civilian.

"What?"

Even in his current state of mind, he knows that he doesn't know the answer to that. He has no idea what a Tau'ri is. Obviously Daniel has a lot more context than Seth does in this situation. Which isn't really saying much, because Seth has just about none. And while he would very much like answers, he's not sure he could properly absorb them right now, and, well, there are obviously more pressing matters.

"I don't-- I don't know what that means," he elaborates, so that Daniel will explain rather than just repeat himself. He could maybe make a guess at that the 'gate' refers to wherever he came out, but what that really means, he has no idea.

"And.. And I don't know how I got here."

It's a bit of a struggle to make the words come out, to actually form sentences. It still feels like his blood is roaring in his ears, or perhaps that's just the building, and the way he's being pulled along (however necessary) is doing him no favours. His body feels numb, and cold, which is probably not helped by his lack of decent clothing. Even with them clearly moving away from the attack, his nerves are completely frayed, the flicker of the lights providing him with another spike in his increasing sense of dread and fear, and if this gets worse or goes on for much longer, Seth is worried he'll end up either hysterical or catatonic. Either would be extremely bad. He knows he's only barely avoiding having a panic attack at the moment, and he's not sure how long he will manage to stave it off.

"Look, I know this is a lot right now," Daniel pants with only half of the usual focus he reserves specifically for civilians in a crisis. He's having to relegate most of his brainpower to working out the geometry of this place and how to get out. This guy certainly can't be from a world that hasn't even developed enough to know the concept of Tau'ri. He isn't acting it, not based on his stricken recognition of gunshots, and he definitely doesn't look it. How can he be completely blind to the idea? Daniel concedes it must happen, surely. "Just - who, who are you, where's your world? We're cut off from the gate right now but once we can formulate a distraction we can dial a way back, I promise."

He's forced to break off the harried explanation when the ping of gunfire greets their entrance around the next corner. Daniel hurriedly leaps back, one hand stretched protectively across the civilian's chest, heart constricting painfully. No way to tell how many of them there were. He glances back at his charge, who is - is really not taking this well and it doesn't help that he doesn't even have shoes, where did he even come from, but Daniel immediately gets distracted by the line of dotted yellow paint on the wall they're currently taking cover behind, and the way the paint's drawn to form an arrow that points - upward.

Bingo.

"Can you get this open?" he asks urgently, jerking his head at the apparent wall hatch that will hopefully, hopefully lead to a ladder that leads to the surface. "We need to get out, do you understand? Up and out of this place. I can lay you some cover."

He shuffles his weapon about for a minute before jamming a new clip into place.

Seth stares blankly at Daniel at the question of his identity.

No, that's. No.

Suddenly that amnesia idea is looking a lot more likely, but apparently he's not the only victim. He doesn't actually have time to consider any further, because then they're being shot at, and Seth is probably only still alive because of Daniel pushing him back.

He closes his eyes tightly, and god, he wishes he was somewhere else, he wishes he was back in his apartment, and he wishes Daniel was there with him and they were listening to music and drinking coffee and... What he'd give for a pair of ruby slippers. No place like home, right?

Seth opens his eyes again at the question, looking at the hatch. He nods quietly, still feeling numb, and as he reaches out for it, he realises his hands are shaking. He tries to focus on what's to be done, to try to think ahead and deal with the situation, to just do as he's told because he thinks his life may depend on it, but Daniel asked him who he was, Daniel doesn't know, how can he...

He's terrified, he's confused and lost, and he can barely make his hands work properly, but somehow he gets it open.

The guy is shaking so badly that Daniel's worried he won't be able to stay on his feet, much less open the access hatch. He manages it eventually, to Daniel's immense relief.

He fires off one last round, eyes squinted against the clattering shells, the acrid scent of cordite, then ducks back behind their cover, peers up the vertical shaft with the ladder rungs that almost certainly lead to the surface. He nods to himself, jerking and sharp. This can work.

"Definitely surface access," he breathes, relieved, then tugs out his sidearm, offers it to his charge handle-first. "I'm gonna have to cover our six, but you can't go up there unarmed. It's - it's a warzone, I mean a literal warzone up there. You know how to fire this?"

Edited 2014-12-04 18:19 (UTC)

He stares at the offered gun. He feels sick just looking at it.

"I-- I don't..."

Seth has very specifically avoided using guns, despite them not being entirely uncommon in his line of work, especially when he was growing up. He's seen what they can do from an uncomfortably young age, and decided that he was probably safer without one. But he still has enough familiarity with one to know what to do, at least theoretically. And then, well, long-term imprisonment didn't exactly do him any favours when it comes to comfort level around weapons and authority figures.

It's also a confirmation that Daniel really doesn't know him. He wouldn't offer it to him so lightly if he did. With the current circumstances, he might have had to do so anyway, but he would've been more hesitant, more understanding and reassuring. Seth is strongly tempted to refuse, but they don't really have time to argue.

He nods, clenching his jaw. Even with the amount of self control it takes to reach out and take the weapon, his hands are still shaking as he checks that the safety is on, and it feels uncomfortably heavy in his grip. He has no intention of firing it.

Daniel hates that he has to induct someone into this, someone who clearly loathes the idea of militant violence. It rings too harshly with a distant part of himself, the uncoordinated civilian who first opened the stargate with its row of arcane glyphs and tumbled through without having fired a gun in his life, without any intention of ever doing so, and by the end had died himself as a result. He'd been lucky about the apparent situational reversibility of the last part, but the rest - all the rest - would change, bitterly.

"All right," he orders his charge. "Let's go, come on."

He rattles off another salvo as a final deterrent before bolting up the ladder after the civilian. The cover was performed more out of necessity, but now hopefully some of the insurgents will have to trip over the bodies of their fellows in order to follow. Daniel bolts the hatch behind them. It won't stop them, but it can at least buy some time.

Pale blue strands of daylight filter their way though the grate at the top. The distant crashing and shaking of warfare mercifully still sounds detached from their current location, though Daniel knows that if the rebels have gotten their hands on any of the larger missile facilities distance won't matter.

"Doing fine," says Daniel encouragingly, now doing his best to scramble up the ladder one-handed while the other hand searches through one of the tac vest's lower pockets for one last stopgap measure against their pursuers. "Just open the hatch and try to find cover. If we're far enough away, no one will see us and we can clear the area."

He's speaking completely randomly; he has no idea if they're even remotely far enough away, basing the deduction entirely off their general position relative to the sounds of weapons fire.

Seth has to stuff the gun into the back of his trousers to climb, not trusting his current grip or strength to hold onto it while climbing. Even so, he's probably going nowhere near as fast as he should, but he's pretty sure it would be worse if he slipped and fell on top of Daniel.

When they reach the hatch and it's time to climb out, Seth hooks his arm around one of the ladder rungs, resting his forehead against the cool metal and closing his eyes.

"Listen," he begins, trying to make himself sound calmer than he really is, with debatable success. But he needs to say this, because Daniel might not know Seth right now, but Seth knows him. At least well enough to have some idea of what might happen, and how Daniel might feel about it.

"If I get shot or blown up or something, it's not your fault. You didn't bring me here." He swallows hard. The last thing he wants to be is a liability, or another reason for Daniel to blame himself. Or for Daniel to get killed. "So don't do anything stupid to protect me, okay?"

His head jerks up sharply to stare at the unidentified civilian who's speaking, oddly, with much more equanimity than he's been acting under so far. And he's talking like - like he has some idea of who he's talking to, the nature of the man under whose care he's been unexpectedly placed.

The skin around Daniel's eyes tightens in the faintest, pained ghost of a smirk. The sentiment is nice but it's not deserved, not by any stretch of the imagination.

"No," he answers finally. "It is. It is my fault. You don't - this world, it's falling apart and that's - it's because of what I -"

Fists bang against the hatch below, and he jumps. Daniel swallows hard, tightens his grip on the rungs, finally locates what he was looking for in his gear. He tears his gaze down and then back up again, desperate. This discussion is going to have to be put on hold.

"We gotta go. Now."

Seth is glad he took the time to secure his grip, because the sound makes him jump more than is safe right now.

Without pausing to consider what he might find above, he reaches up and pushes the hatch open, and the sight of open air, however smokey, is an amazing relief. He doesn't do great underground.

He climbs out and steps onto the grass, glancing around, but he can't see any people, armed or otherwise, at least not on first look. So rather than running for cover, he turns back to make sure Daniel gets out alright.

Daniel does get out all right, scrambles out immediately after Seth and casts about for any sign of trouble. The entire area still tremors from the occasional missile impacts but he concludes that they're not in any immediate danger. Daniel swiftly crouches to press his sole block of C4 just under the hatch, then swings the whole thing shut. He pulls the trigger mechanism out of his pocket, thumb braced and ready to set the thing off at a moment's notice.

"Okay," he mutters as he rises, one hand dropping onto the civilian's shoulder. "We're set, we just gotta move. Get you somewhere that's, well." He doesn't want to use the word 'safe' because nowhere is safe right now short of Earth, but that's not in the cards right now.

He pauses, scanning the horizon to get some sense of his bearings. They're in the outskirts of the city, very much exposed in the more open space. The denser areas will have the benefit of more ways to hide versus the risk of more rebels. And they can't afford to get too wide a distance margin from the gate.

"All right," says Daniel with a decisive nod, steering his charge toward the not-terribly-distant line of denser cityscape. "We'll see if there's refuge in the city because, honestly, I don't even know if the local military authorities are still standing anymore."

Seth flinches a little at the hand on his shoulder. It's Daniel, he has to remind himself. Someone he trusts, who has no intention of hurting him. The last time he put his hand on his shoulder, Seth had welcomed it. But it's so hard to block out these reactions right now, it's completely automatic, visceral.

He wants to ask Daniel not to touch him right now, but he's having trouble with words at the moment. The entire situation, and Daniel carrying around explosives, and... whatever the hell kind of mess he's stumbled into. From what he can tell, Daniel really wasn't joking when he said warzone. How did he even get here? This very obviously is not Manhattan, or anywhere near it.

And he's in his pyjamas, barefeet in the grass, and he's probably having a subdued, slow-burning panic attack or something right now, judging by the tightness of his chest, how clammy he feels, how his hands won't stop shaking. But he knows if he breaks down properly, he might not be able to pull himself together again. So instead he allows himself to be led, swallowing down his nausea.

"It'll be okay," Daniel says automatically. It won't, but the guy still looks terrified out of his mind. He needs to hear it.

He gauges their distance from their escape hatch carefully, then once they're far enough away flips the trigger switch.

"Brace yourself," is all the warning he has time to offer.

The C4 detonates in a concussive chemical decomposition of nitrogen and plasticizers, rumbling the ground and leaving the now crater-like area behind them belching thick plumes of smoke. Daniel spares it a wary backward look over one shoulder as he carefully guides his civilian onward. Any rebels left in that facility won't be following them any longer.

Edited 2014-12-04 21:28 (UTC)

It's definitely not enough warning. Even knowing what Daniel is doing, the force of the explosion seems to rip through Seth. Not literally, because they're far enough away that he's not even knocked off his feet, despite how unsteady he feels at moment.

He doesn't look back. He wonders how many people just died because Daniel pressed that button. Surely the people who by now might've been making their way up the hatch. Probably more nearby. Dozens, maybe. Perhaps even more. Seth can't gauge the logistics of it.

Images make their way unbidden into his mind, now there's nothing but walking to focus on. The closest ones would've been blown to bits, dead in an instant. The ones further away won't have been so lucky. They'll still be alive, but not for long. Body parts blown off, letting them bleed to death. Or getting trapped under debris from the cave-ins undoubtedly caused by the explosion, crushed to death, or perhaps slow suffocation.

He wonders what they're thinking. What they're fighting for. Whether they know who's killed them. What their names are. He wonders if Daniel knows.

Without warning, he drops forward onto all four, and empties the contents of his stomach onto the ground.

Edited 2014-12-04 21:41 (UTC)

The guy goes down anyway despite being a reasonable distance from the blast radius and Daniel drops into a crouch beside him, wrapping one arm over him for support. He's not handling this well, and this is exactly the wrong time for this to be happening.

"It's okay," he says, again and again and again, a formless orison buried in uncertainty. "It's okay."

They can't stay here. They can't stay here. They need to move.

Daniel sees the projectile heading straight for their position before it hits, and his stomach drops in an agonized knot.

"Down," he orders pointlessly, because they're already down, but he has to push the civilian down anyway and shield him from the worst as best as he can in the split second he has.

The projectile, the bomb or the missile or the mortar or whatever it is, strikes close enough to send fragmented shrapnel spinning their way. Daniel's vest takes the brunt of the force but several shards of debris bounce off his shoulders and legs and the back of his neck in tiny, stinging pellets. It's too close. That is way too close.

The distance they'd achieved is evidently not enough. Their position is compromised. They need to move. Their position is compromised. Their position is compromised.

Seth wishes he could stop shaking, that he could believe Daniel's words and move on. But even if he doesn't believe, it's comforting to hear Daniel's voice saying it, because this is still Daniel and Seth trusts him and Seth needs to remember that.

A closer look at his own sick isn't exactly what he needs right now, he thinks dully as Daniel pushes him down. He quivers at the blast. It's probably a good thing he can barely feel his limbs at the moment, because it muffles the sharp pain of debris hitting his legs, the parts of him Daniel can't cover. But they're still alive, and Daniel isn't crying out in pain or anything so it can't be that bad.

He pushes himself up a little, grabbing onto Daniel's vest, trying to signal he can move again. Mostly because he has to. "Go," he chokes out, wishing he could deal with this, wishing he could be even remotely useful.

God, this guy is practically falling apart, one hand fisted into the thick fabric of Daniel's vest, trembling so hard Daniel can feel it. He keeps one arm wrapped around the other man's back as he pulls him to his feet as quickly as he dares.

"I'm sorry." He shouldn't be moved, he really shouldn't, not when he's shaking like this and not when he's dealing with everything so poorly, but they do not have the option. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry this is happening."

And then they have to move, because the next impact smashes into the building closest to them and blows half the thing out, chunks of wood and plaster and molded steel tumbling between choking clouds of thick white dust. Daniel practically has to haul the other man alongside him to hare away. Fleetingly, he wishes he could move him gently but knows there simply is not enough time, makes a zigzagged path to the nearest building.

They don't enter it; that would be tantamount to suicide with the way the missiles blasted through the last building so easily. Instead Daniel makes for the relative cover of the back of the faintly militarian boxlike walls, blinking away runnels of sweat intermingled with heavy dust.

"They've found us," Daniel informs the other man tautly. "The rebels, they - we need to get someplace they can't follow."

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tw: npc death, warfare, general unpleasantness for the whole thread cause i forgot to put warnings

tw: and more graphic description of that death

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