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

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

Entry tags:

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.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Daniel's just dumped his empty coffee cup in the bin in the corner and has been searching the bedside draws for a paper and pen - he comes up instead with a battered Old Testament, as irony would have it - when he stands up just in time to see Nick leaning against the doorframe, looking a little punch-drunk. Maybe worse. Probably worse. Yeah, worse.

"Uh. Hey. So." He moves closer. "You okay there, buddy?"

Edited 2014-12-07 23:08 (UTC)

He waits for the dizziness to pass and the static to fade from his vision, then pushes himself back upright. He is aware that using his Grace for little frivolous things like this will only make his recovery longer, but...

But it is his Grace, and his to use as he wishes. He needs no other justification.

"I'm fine," he says, though he would not be surprised if Daniel doesn't believe him.

He turns and walks to the bed furthest from the door, and sits down on the edge of it. It's hard and will probably be uncomfortable to lay on, but it matters little to him. He takes the lid off of his coffee and it smells bitter and hot.

What is it that humans would say at a time like this? Something to put another at ease?

"I probably just need to eat something."

There. That's an adequate explanation.

"What are you looking for?"

The pain is like nothing they have ever known.

This, it occurs to them, must be because they have never encountered celestial energy such as this before.

It is a peculiar feeling.

The pain feels exactly as a holy weapon ought to, tempered and branded in searing metaphysical fire. Yet there is Hellfire, dark, hollow, persistent, ridging the impact of many piercing divine swordlike limbs.

This will not deter them.

On the contrary, it makes them angry.

Illyria roars their displeasure, whips appendages and darkened eldritch energy to surge directly back at the blazing thing. They meet in aberrant harmony, crackling oscillation, humming thickly and full of cold-bright-hot. Two substances opposed.

The battlefield floods with dichotomous light.

Daniel's just as skeptical of this variation of 'I'm fine' as he was of the last, but it's spoken with the curtness of someone who doesn't wish to discuss it. Hopefully Nick's just tired and hungry which, well, Daniel can't blame him.

He drops onto the other bed, Old Testament still in hand. He glances at it with a soft "huh" of distant, halfhearted amusement before tossing it onto the pillow.

"Paper and pen. Like to, you know, write stuff down sometimes. Helps me relax." And gives him the impression that he's doing Important Work when he hasn't done anything of the kind in a while.

Lucifer cocks his head at Daniel, a curious birdlike gesture, and reaches into one of his large pockets. There are a few bills' worth of change from his purchases and some coins; metal and paper. He does not enjoy being in this human's debt, because indebted he is, but there are small ways that he can begin to close the gap.

It is easier and less draining for him to transmute other objects than to simply make things out of nothing. He wraps his hand around one of the dollar bills in his pocket, the one not facing Daniel, and pushes a little power; he does the same with a coin, and he has a small pad of paper and a pen when he's done. The act makes him dizzy again, puts spots in front of his eyes, but it quickly passes.

He pulls the objects from his pocket.

"Will this suffice?"

His eyebrows climb impressively high when Nick spontaneously produces paper and pen. Did he just have those with him?

"Um. Yeah. Those, uh. Those should be fine." His head goes to one side in an unconscious mimicry of Nick's earlier motion, the question mark hovering just out of range of the spoken words. "Thanks."

Nick looks a little unsteady again despite being seated now, and one side of Daniel's mouth twists down in an expression that just borders on admonishing. "You should probably eat."

There is no explanation that he can offer Daniel that will be acceptable for why he has a pen and paper on him, so he ignores the questioning look and goes back to his coffee. Daniel has commanded him to eat-- not that he has the right to demand anything of him, but Lucifer will allow the transgression to slide-- and instead takes a tentative sip of the drink. It's bitter and warm and tastes a little like it smells, and he can feel the heat go down through his chest.

It's... pleasant. He does not mind the taste or the feel of it. It should make no difference to him; he views all food items as interchangeable, immaterial so long as they provide his vessel with the fuel it needs, but he enjoys this.

He drinks a little more before he pulls the packet of almonds from his pocket and opens them; he eats mechanically, as though food is just another necessary thing, with all the gusto that other people did their taxes.

Seth shakes his head in frustration. "It's not my birth name," he acknowledges. He doesn't share his actual name just yet though, because, well. On some off-chance he's somehow actually made it back to his real universe, he's ALSO traveled quite a few years back in time. In this is his universe, then there's a version of him still living in Manchester.

There's a certain amount of panic building up again, and everything is just... It's hurting him to see Daniel injured and in pain like this, but he can't actually do anything for him, and this Daniel doesn't know him well enough to be all that comforted by anything he has to say. And all things considered, Daniel is better off right now if you overlook the physical, so Seth needs to allow himself to be wrapped up in his own problems. Because they are currently astronomical.

"Look, I'll tell you anything you or they want to know," he says, moving closer to the table and putting his hands on it. "But you need to know..." He takes a deep, steadying breath. He wishes he didn't have to tell him this, he wishes this was the Daniel who already knows. But he can't see himself going on like this and coming out of it with any semblance of sanity. And if Daniel knows the extent of it, then he has faith Daniel will do what he can to help.

"Less than half a year ago, I was illegally kept prisoner in an underground base for four months," he begins, staring at the table, making every effort to keep his voice from breaking. "I was tortured, drugged, and experimented on. Three times I tried to kill myself." His voice remains steady, but as he speaks he can feel something hot and wet making its way down his cheeks. He ignores it.

"I'm - I'm telling you this because.. If this keeps up, I'm not sure I see myself making it through the week," he finishes, finally looking up at Daniel.

Unfortunately, Daniel misses Nick's coffee-related revelations as he accepts paper and pen and makes himself semi-horizontal, leaning against the rather unstable headboard as he scribbles busily at the little pad of paper. A myriad of words, mostly Latin and Latin-based with a side of some oddly geometric blocky writing, start to form a rough shape on paper, distorted in the way words are in dreams but not enough, apparently, to deter Daniel from his work.

He pauses to stick the heel of the pen in his mouth absentmindedly, glances up and notes with some satisfaction that Nick's decided to take his own advice.

"Feeling better?"

Daniel's eyes drop shut in a clear pronouncement of despair. Suddenly Seth's discomfort with weapons, with military protocol, with the underground base, and his apparent natural ability for phase-shifting - it all makes a lot more sense. Experimented on. God, what did that even entail?

Something else, ominous and chilled, creeps into the pit of Daniel's stomach. If the IOA finds out about any of this - can he keep this from them, legally? But they could always check security footage. They could always - damn it. Daniel's civilian status won't be an adequate enough loophole if the IOA gets their hands on this. On him. On Seth. Fuck.

Daniel sits and looks at the man who has reached his limit, who is visibly trembling and at the very edge of his stability, and wonders helplessly how well the other version of him knew this guy. He wonders who much better that version of him would be at countering this, at subverting the amorality of an unfeeling government and cutting swaths out of red tape to let Seth walk free or, at the very least, not live his life in a closet-sized cell at Area 51.

The worst thing is - the cameras. Every room on this base has twenty-four hour surveillance and he has no doubt that this footage will be making its way up the chain of command. They might be monitoring them both now for all he knows. Now they know that. They know it. They know about the apparent suicidal tendencies and they know to keep Seth in a state to prevent them. Daniel doesn't want to think about what that might involve (it crosses his mind anyway, images of four-point restraints or a drug-induced comatose state because this man is technically a metahuman, isn't that fascinating, can we discover how that works) and he doesn't want to think about Seth, Seth who's been through more than enough for one person, going through that for any period of time let alone the truncated lifespan the higher-ups will no doubt want.

"Seth," says Daniel carefully, making conscious effort to speak as clearly as possible, but dismay renders the words dull and clipped. He leans forward, ignoring the tearing sensation that little stunt produces and the way he can feel the cracked bones skid against their fractures in his ribcage. "They have ways of preventing that. With the resources they have."

He's leaving that where it is. Seth doesn't need to hear more of that.

"I'm fighting them on this," he continues, each word a low desperate pull. "I'm fighting them as hard as I can and Jack is backing me, everyone on this base with a shred of basic human decency is backing me, but the point is that the IOA gets their orders from the White House direct. And I'm - not in the condition to fly there myself, not like this."

Edited 2014-12-08 00:26 (UTC)

Seth listens quietly, and somehow every word feels like a stab to the gut, and he has to return to angrily staring at the table. Daniel is fighting this, but. But. But there's basically nothing he can do. Seth will end up in a cell somewhere, probably poked and prodded by scientists, with no thought to his mental or emotional health, because of what he can do. Even if it's not that bad, it's certainly an end to his freedom. In a world where he has no friends, no home, no life, and no hope of getting to build a new one.

The one person he cares about at all here is someone who barely knows him, someone Seth recently saw murder a large group of people and is not even sure how much he trusts. And even if he decides he does, Daniel actually does have his life and friends and purpose, and further burdening him with the responsibility of worrying about Seth, who's barely worthy of his notice at all - it seems hardly worth it.

And suddenly, hitting him like a truck, Seth realises he can think of no other way.

He swallows thickly, and once again looks up, sincere but hopeless. "It's not your fault, Daniel. Remember that. There's nothing you can do."

Without warning, he gets to his feet, the chair skidding loudly backwards. He tears his eyes away from Daniel and walks straight towards the door, fueled by desperate determination. Despite his exhaustion, it's no trouble at all to walk straight through the wall. He heads towards the first guard he spots, remaining intangible in case they try to stop him.

Seth takes the gun right out of the guard's hand. A simple matter of being solid in relation to the gun, then making the gun intangible to the guard. He steps back, ignoring anything going on around him as it can't touch him anyway, turns the safety off, and presses the gun against his temple. Quick and easy, and he won't have to worry anymore. Letting himself become solid again, he closes his eyes and pulls the trigger.

The shot rings out through the corridor, the bullet bouncing off the ceiling. For a few moments Seth doesn't understand why he can still hear what's going on. He opens his eyes and raises his free hand to his temple, to his undamaged skin. No. Through pure physical instinct, knowing what was about to happen, but despite his efforts not to, he let the bullet pass straight through him, not affecting him at all.

"NO!"

He practically screams it, anger and despair welling up inside him, and he slams his fists against the corridor wall, repeating the word loudly and furiously, raging against how completely, utterly unfair it is.

"I think I'll live," he replies, and now that his benefactor is apparently satisfied at his nutritional intake, he rolls up the bag and returns it to his pocket. New York is still a long way off, and there may be a time later when he is walking that he'll require the energy it provides. He must ration things carefully, so that he won't get stuck in some back woods with nothing, like he was when Daniel picked him up.

He takes another few sips of coffee, savoring the warmth-- heat is a luxury, now that he has the ability to appreciate it, all the more so because he's just had an extra four hundred years' worth of absolute-zero cold in Hell-- and then sets it down at his feet.

He looks at his vessel's feet and the dirty, worn-down shoes they are housed in. He has not removed them since he's been on Earth, but he understands that it is inappropriate to lay on furniture with them on. He unties them with some difficulty, as the mud and grime has nearly fused the laces together, and carefully loosens them. When he pulls them out, one at a time, there is a dry, crackling sound, like crunching leaves in autumn. It's from the fabric of his socks, crusted over with dried blood and fluid from the sores and blisters on his feet; he's worn down his extremities about as badly as his shoes, if the fact that his socks, once white, are now almost entirely rust-brown is anything to go by.

There's both pain and relief at having them free, and he experimentally wiggles his toes just to see how much it aches.

The tone of those words, spoken so hollowly and with all the bitterness of deadly purpose, torques every one of Daniel's thoughts into sheer, plunging horror.

"Don't -" He stretches out his good hand and reaches to grab at Seth as the man stands but the hand passes harmlessly through him, he's - he's making a horrible choice, oh god, Daniel might have been able to save him before but now he's shown them what he can do and they will never trust him again, they will never allow him out of whatever facility they decide he should be confined to, and Daniel rises pointlessly from his seat to plead for Seth to listen to him but -

A collective of broken chords shred their way up his spine at the inadvisably sudden movement and Daniel barely gets his hand out in time to sag against the wall, raggedly, head pounding and each breath heavy, painful, constricting, and teeth gritted as he tries to counter the splintered, agonized melody his ribs and back are twisting themselves into. He slides down several inches, can feel himself sinking to the floor but Daniel's head jerks up when he hears the gunshot.

Oh god.

Oh god. Oh fuck.

He snaps himself upright, spine shuddering with the effort, to slam his hand against the door. The buzz-click of the mechanism heralds its swing outward, and Daniel nearly collapses onto the SF who must have been alerted to the current situation, who supports him unasked as he stumbles into the hall, stomach curdling with dread, waiting to see the blood and fragments of brain blasted against the wall.

Apparently, half to Daniel's relief and half to his horror, Seth's attempt to end things prematurely did not succeed. The man's shouts are unbearable to listen to. Accusatory, sharp, the frayed release of someone who has lost the last scrap of control he had over himself.

"Get back," Daniel orders desperately to the SF, to the various base security personnel who have started to come funneling their way. He waves at them furiously, limping with shoulders hunched directly at the target they've no doubt just received orders to fire nonfatally upon, trying to signal them away. "Get the hell back."

One of them either hears too late or doesn't care. She raises her weapon and fires twice.

Daniel gets distracted from his lexical undertakings by the stunningly, singularly nauseating smell that abruptly fills the room. His head bobs up, nose wrinkling, and he performs a perfect double-take when it occurs to him that were those socks supposed to be white.

It's a good thing Daniel hasn't eaten recently.

"Ah." He swallows thickly and tries not to gag and thinks of the most polite way to phrase this. "Um. You, uh, might wanna think about showering."

Daniel is making earnest effort to breathe through his mouth but the overpowering stench sweeps over him again regardless. The man has been walking miles upon miles without stopping. Obviously there will be wear and tear. Very odorous wear and tear.

"Just, you know. A thought." No offense.

The sound of two more shots is what brings Seth's attention back to his surroundings. He turns and sees the guns pointed at him, and realises the shots were definitely fired at him, but with little use.

He also spots Daniel, and the look on his face does nothing but cause Seth more agony. He doesn't want him to have to see this, to see Seth like this. But he hardly has any alternative. Soon now, his strength will leave him and he'll be carted off somewhere. At this point he's sealed his fate.

At the uselessness of the two first shots and Daniel's orders to get back, none of them are advancing on him just yet. And then Seth has his second, terrible epiphany. He'd been so busy thinking about the power they know about, that he hadn't considered his original one. Of course, giving up his phasing won't help him any when it comes to avoiding imprisonment. It'll simply show them something else he can do. But it's a solution to his other problem.

He steps towards the woman who fired upon him, and she can shoot him as many times as she wants, it won't make a difference until he decides it does. He grabs her wrist, and doesn't even care what he's potentially condemning her to, she's merely the face of this fucked-up, heartless group of people, the object for Seth to project his anger and frustration onto, to get some relief for how unjust it all feels. The light shines bright and blinding, and the rush is both torture and exhilaration at once. He doesn't look at Daniel. Blocks his existence out completely from his mind.

As soon as the light fades, he lifts the gun once again and fires, and he wakes up with a start, drenched in sweat and breathing heavily, every muscle aching and his heart thumping, but finally, at last, he's home.

He looks over at Daniel, then down again at his own vessel. He had been able to keep Nick clean before by virtue of his Grace; he doesn't really know what actually goes in to the process of human hygiene. He knows, theoretically, how it works, that the addition of water and soap and person somehow comes out as cleanliness on the other side of the equal sign, but isn't quite sure of the specifics of how one gets there. Presumably there is scrubbing involved.

Humans did it literally every day, though. How hard could it possibly be?

"Yes," he says. "I'll do that."

He stands, ignores the utter hatred that his feet are sending him from being forced to bear his weight again, and goes into the bathroom. He closes the door, because he thinks there's something with modern humans about nudity and not being naked in front of strangers, so removing his clothes in Daniel's view may not be socially acceptable. It's probably better to be safe than accidentally make an unfortunate social insinuation.

Lucifer removes his clothing once he is out of eyeshot, folding each article before setting it on the counter. He looks at himself in the mirror for the first time and, at that point, perhaps understands why Daniel stopped in the first place. He is dirty, his face dust-smeared and his hair looking brown rather than blond, streaky where sweat has taken some of the grime off. His beard is hitting a fairly advanced stage of unruliness, long past the point where he should have started shaving it. There is a distinct difference in the skin tone of his face and hands and arms as compared to his torso, both from tanning and from simply the fact that his covered skin has less dirt on it. Nick had not been the thinnest man when he'd possessed him-- he is middle-aged and, though perhaps fairly decent-looking for forty, had carried a little weight around the middle-- and now had lost most of whatever spare fat he'd been carrying. Walking a few hundred miles is apparently an effective dieting plan.

There are small containers of soaps next to the sink, which he assumes are to be used for bathing. The bar is a shape he is familiar with, while the 'conditioner' and 'shampoo' are strange substances that he does not feel that he requires. Soap in hand, he turns to the shower itself.

There is a shower head at the top, which he understands is where water comes from. There is a dial and handle further down, which works in some manner that he is not particularly familiar with.

This could be more difficult than he expected.

Edited 2014-12-08 02:58 (UTC)

Bitterly, Daniel wishes he could charge forward and place himself in that line of fire so they'd be forced to stand down, but he's saddled himself with cracked ribs, a broken arm, a dozen other physical injuries he can't remember that render him utterly useless because he stupidly threw himself on one sword too many, again.

His breath of relief upon understanding that Seth is still intangible, the bullets having streaked through him, cracks when Seth advances on the guard, eyes burning with defiance and broken purpose.

"No," Daniel says, then rapidly rising in frequency and desperation and pitch: "No, no, no, no no no no no nononononoNO!"

He pelts forward and makes it two steps before his legs slide out beneath him and he skids, painfully, against the hard cement SGC floor, his entire back wracked with pain, hard pinching numbness wrapped around all the important parts of his spine and compressing it into a single pressurized column of kaleidoscopic agony. He glances up, momentarily breathless, to protest again but glimpses a hardened light trailing out of Seth's hand, clasped with that of the security guard who attempted to neutralize him.

Before Daniel can begin to question the meaning of that, Seth puts the gun beneath his chin and shoots, and the sprayed crimson fountain strikes the ceiling wetly. Seth's body tumbles back in a broken arc to thud against the hard right angle where the floor meets the wall without fanfare.

Daniel can't breathe.

He thought he could save this one.

His head drops to stare at the floor without seeing it.

He thought he could save this one.

Wrong again.

--

Waking up is an incongruous exercise in relief and horrified realization. Daniel doesn't sleep for the remainder of the night.

For a time Daniel's content to scrawl in his notebook in silence, but eventually it strikes him how that might be a little more silence than is typical for a shower. He glances at the bathroom door, concerned, but feels that calling to ask if everything's okay would be inappropriate somehow. Then again, there're definitely a few things off about Nick that leads Daniel to believe that he really has unintentionally picked up an offworlder.

Finally his willpower can't hold any longer. The apparent silence from the bathroom means that whatever Nick's doing in there, Daniel probably isn't interrupting anything important.

He knocks tentatively.

"Uh. You all right in there?" Okay, wait. He can't just call things like that into a bathroom. "Is the shower broken or something? Wouldn't be surprised, with the state of this place." Marginally better.

No, Daniel. Things are not all right in there. Lucifer is the Angel of the Deepest Pit, He Who Is Called Dragon, the Morningstar, Father of Lies, and he cannot figure out how to work a fucking shower. He's having a minor existential crisis over tugging on a weird device and having nothing happen and this is something that even children can use, how is this giving him a problem?

He is seriously considering using whatever is left of his Grace to burn this entire establishment to the ground in a desperate attempt to save his dignity. It would probably be doing the world a favor.

But if he does that, he might burn Daniel, as well, and that would be an unacceptable way to reward him.

He glances over his shoulder at the door, not that Daniel can see it.

"I'm... fine," he replies, probably less certainly than someone who's actually fine would.

That is the exact intonation of 'fine' that someone uses when things are not actually fine but they don't want to admit it.

All right.

Fine.

"Seriously," says Daniel, now pinching the bridge of his nose. "I can call maintenance. It's not a problem. Is the thing not working?"

That's because Lucifer is not fine and really doesn't want to admit it.

"I..."

He doesn't want more humans brought into this mess. And if there isn't anything actually wrong with it, someone will be there for no reason, and even Satan realizes that coming into a by-the-hour fleabag motel like this where two men are sharing a room, one of which is in Lucifer's state and the other of which is in Daniel's state, will raise eyebrows. Eyebrows will be raised and Lucifer doubts that, after all the ceaseless irritations of the past month, he will be able to restrain himself from setting the eyebrow-raisee on fire.

Daniel would probably not appreciate that, and that would probably draw even more attention to Lucifer. It is a situation that he should avoid, if at all possible.

"I don't know if it's broken."

Edited 2014-12-08 03:38 (UTC)

Oh for god's sake.

"Do you need me to check?" Daniel asks patiently. Bearing in mind that this guy could legitimately be from another planet, the confusion is understandable. And Daniel really, really thinks Nick should at least be able to take a shower. For everyone's sake.

"I would appreciate," he says, "just a little less patronizing, if you don't mind."

He reaches for one of the towels that's hanging from a rack and wraps it around his waist, securing it by tucking in one of the corners. Then, at least, if he opens the door, Daniel won't be scandalized by the sight of another man's genitalia, which apparently is something that people get scandalized over these days. Modern day is a strange, strange time.

"But yes, I do."

He shuts his eyes in an extended blink of self-directed frustration. Patronizing was what he'd been hoping to avoid tone-wise, but he must be more tired than he thought.

"It's no problem," he says, then the door opens and Daniel gets the full power of an unwashed man's aura.

That takes him a minute.

Daniel steels himself with another lengthy blink and a brief shake of his head, then once more unto the breach. He has killed gods and stared down incomprehensible omnipotent lightshow aliens. Surely he can enter this malodorous domain and fix the goddamn shower.

A few twists of the knob rewards him with the gratifying hiss of water, then some fiddling with the admittedly faulty dial adjusts the temperature to what Daniel assumes is the norm shower temperature. Flicking water off his fingertips, he rises and shrugs.

"I guess it's fine? Sometimes places like these are a little, you know." He jerks his head expressively. "You good?" Cause Daniel would really like to get out of the reeking hellhole of a bathroom.

Lucifer turns in an attempt at making room and at keeping his back out of Daniel's view, though the mirror on the wall behind him makes that essentially impossible; he doesn't want the man to take much interest in the two burns he has, running from shoulder blade to mid-back. They are shiny and red and fairly fresh, still mottled around the ugly yellows and greens of a healing bruise, from when his wings burned all the way down to the root.

"I think I can take it from here."

And even if he has trouble, he'll muddle through it. He has seen things washed before, it can't be that difficult in practice-- soap, washing cloth, apply directly to the ~~forehead~~ dirty areas.

This is your cue to exit stage left, not pursued by angel.

Edited 2014-12-08 05:28 (UTC)

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 11 of 15

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

tw: suicide ideation, so much trauma, very heavy

no subject

tw: more trauma, more suicide ideation, this thread is awful

tw: actual suicide attempt

no subject

tw: injury, guns

no subject

tw: just assume the earlier warnings keep applying

no subject

see above re: this thread is in all ways terrible

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject