"That's one of the reasons the Others buried those memories," Daniel agrees with a regretful nod. Julian's excitement over the prospect honestly reminds him of the reason he agreed to Ascension in the first place, even if the memory of that promise rings more bitterly now. "And it's why I had to leave my body behind, even if I hadn't been dying at the time. Human physiology just...can't contain it all. Maybe it was worth it, for all that knowledge of, of everything. But I don't remember."

He tries for another smile but it just comes out pained, a twisting grimace on one side of his mouth, and he has to look away. Aliyah makes a low, sympathetic rumble and flops down to drop her head on his lap. He absently unbends his knees and stretches his legs out to accommodate her. Julian's addressing of the whole thing, mildly clinical and strictly third-party in his outlook, helps, if only slightly. It achieves that scientific distance that Daniel himself no longer has access to.

"Saved my life a few times. Made me a target in others." And darkened him, perhaps irreversibly, to know that the godlike beings he once revered for their potential power and knowledge were content to watch entire galaxies wither under oppressive megalomaniacal cosmic reshaping, simply because they thought themselves above the act of physical interference.