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applesaucedream2014-11-28 03:50 pm
applesaucemod) wrote in applesaucedream2014-11-28 03:50 pm
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.]
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.]
no subject
He wipes at his mouth with his sleeve, though there's nothing there but some spit and dust. He's remained remarkably blood-free in this whole affair, apart from the few scrapes and minor wounds he's gotten from shrapnel and debris. He hasn't had time to examine himself, he just knows he kind of hurts all over. But surely some of that is simply his mental state, shock, whatever.
Sitting back onto his heels, he looks up at the man speaking to him. He thinks he might be too exhausted to go anywhere without help, but judging by the phrase 'taking a walk', he's not sure he has much choice. The rest of his words take a bit longer to parse, and his brain seems to be working unbelievably slowly now he's no longer in mortal danger. He wouldn't go so far as to say he's safe, but he's no longer moments away from death.
Jackson, he realises after a moment, means Daniel. 'Iso' takes a bit longer. Isolation? He prays that's not what he means, because that sounds like the last thing he needs right now, but again he's not sure he can really argue. He also doesn't know what to tell them. Telling the truth isn't always the best idea with hostile government personnel, but since he has no idea what they want to hear, making something up would probably be even worse. Especially since Daniel is not here to speak for him. He'll at least have to stick with the things he's told Daniel, so that when Daniel wakes up, their stories will match.
"I'm from Earth," he says, his voice sounding surprisingly hoarse. He holds out the piece of paper he's been clutching this entire time, since he no longer has any need of it, and hopefully it shows that Daniel had definitely been intending for Seth to come here. "He was helping me-- We were helping each other get back."
Not that he was an awful lot of help. More of a burden, definitely. Daniel would probably still be fine if didn't have to drag Seth around everywhere. Sure, Seth had saved their lives earlier, but Daniel probably wouldn't have needed saving if it weren't for him. And now Daniel is injured, and who knows if he'll even make it, but no, Seth can't bear to think about that possibility right now.
no subject
Someone does. Seeing as he's not in a state of medical emergency, two someones, both SFs and with very little consideration for Seth's apparent discomfort, escort him up six levels and through the subterranean halls into a small and windowless room furnished with one table and two chairs and little else, where their orders have apparently decided they leave him while the information makes its way up the appropriate strata of command and back down again.
For hours.
This is not typical protocol, but the implementation of subconscious terrors in nightmares hasn't stopped with Daniel's own past regrets; it's pulling from Seth's lingering fears as well and applying them just as liberally.
That doesn't mean Daniel's subconscious won't be throwing Seth a bone, however. Eventually, after the seemingly interminable waiting period, the door opens.
no subject
As it is, Seth remains quiet, and they don't ask him anything further, and then he gets dumped into what is definitely an interrogation room.
Under different circumstances, he might've railed against this treatment. Demanded to be seen, to be informed what's going on, to be acknowledged at all. He knows himself well enough to know he's not above lashing out at his cage and his captors.
Two things are stopping him. One is the hope that soon Daniel will wake up and come see him, or speak for him, and that if Seth behaves aggressively then that will definitely count against him. The other is that he's just so completely exhausted. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. Spiritually too, but he's not sure he's been all that great there for ages.
Most of his time is spent on the floor, leaned against the wall. There's a chair there, sure, but it's not actually that much more comfortable, and when he's all alone it somehow just makes everything more stressful. So exposed, in the center of the room. He'd rather be along the edges, back to the wall. It's easier on his claustrophobia, seeing as much of the room as possible, rather than having it pressing in from all directions.
Time passes unbearably slow, and it's impossible to guess how long he's been in there. He's tired and hungry and thirsty, but physical needs seem to take a backseat. Regardless of how tired he is, he couldn't sleep here. He wonders if they'll keep him in here long enough to go into withdrawal. He wonders if it's already starting.
He breaks down twice while waiting, each time until it seems like there's no more emotion or tears to wring out of him. He's not even sure what he's specifically upset about when it happens. It's just all too much, and it doesn't seem focused on one particular thing. Sometimes the sounds or the images of the people Daniel killed. Daniel asking him to kill. Memories of his Daniel, the one who knows him, both things that happened and things that didn't. Gabe, and Johnny, and his apartment. Kelly, or Shannon. Even Manchester, which he hasn't seen in years. Happy and sad things alike. The topics capable of upsetting him seem endless.
And then, at last, at long last, the sharp sound of the door opening, and Seth lifts his head to look.
no subject
He locates the guy at last, huddled in the corner and not in one of the two perfectly serviceable chairs that are right there? Jack O'Neill is a little offended. The accommodations aren't great, sure, but chairs have gotta be better than floor, right?
"Hey there," he says, a little cheerier than the situation really merits but he's just received the first piece of good news to come his way in months and that's bound to make him a mite chirpy. He enters the room bearing a tray of nondescript food and bottled water. Both objects get set down on the table as Jack takes a seat in the chair closest to the door, which has swung quietly shut behind him, leaning back in an untidy slouch of disarming unprofessionalism.
"Commissary grub." He indicates the tray with swing of a hand, nudging the chair opposite him with one toe meaningfully. "Not five-star, I know, but gotta be better than that offworld stuff. Yeesh."
He looks at the room's other occupant expectantly. You gonna come out of your hole there, gopher?
no subject
He feels like he's seeing one half of a good cop bad cop routine. But the surreality of it at least shakes him out of his thoughts a little, since it's so completely against expectations, he has no choice but to deal with the present rather than what he thinks is supposed to happen.
Seth wearily gets to his feet, approaching the table and sitting down with a certain amount of trepidation. Still, the offered meal is impossible to pass up at the moment. "Thanks," he says, opening the bottle and gulping down a good quarter of it in one go. It's not even that cold, and yet it's blissfully refreshing.
"How's Daniel?" are the first words he speaks once he sets the bottle down, a little breathless now.
no subject
"He'll be sore in the morning," answers Jack amiably, one eyebrow arching up at the stranger's concern. Daniel doing that intense-personal-bonding thing with offworlders isn't new, and neither is the immediate first-name basis. Daniel has that effect on people. "Still out. But he'll live." In a stunning turn of events.
He leans forward, dispelling some of his lighter air, but his expression doesn't shift from its amalgamation of expressively bored and politely curious.
"So." Brightly delivered, pitched upward, laden with meaning. "Let's skip right over the weather. Mind telling me a bit more about you, yourself and...you?"
That was meant to be mildly clever. Which it was, damnit. Not quite the intensively sincere spin Daniel would put on it, but supposedly he's gotten that routine already.
no subject
That seems to be all the pre-amble they get, though. Right on to the amble.
"Uh," Seth answers eloquently, unsure where to begin. Unlike Daniel, he's never been the most good with words, and his abilities are currently very limited.
"Seth Johnson," he says, picking a new last name, though not a very different one. He tends to switch them up whenever there's a significant change in his life, and this is, well, it's certainly significant, but he's gotten used to the J.
From there on, what else to say becomes less obvious, but he struggles on. "From Manchester. Live in Manhattan. Was there, until I.. wasn't. Suddenly I was in that, um, that gateroom, on..." He frowns, concentrating. "Tergalus?" Close enough. "And Daniel saved me."
Unsure where to go after that quick summary, he starts picking a little at the food. He certainly won't turn it down, but it's strange to be interrogated while he's having dinner. Or, the other way around, probably.
This summary will surely lead to questions he can't answer, but in any case they'll wonder how the hell he got there, so he might as well be upfront about having no idea. Well, he has some idea, but not one he can easily explain and not sound like a complete lunatic. Besides, mentioning the Rift brings up so much other stuff. Some of it he would prefer not to share.
no subject
"Yeah, he does that," drawls Jack, folding his arms. "Real savior complex...thing."
He watches Johnson for a minute with the sort of faint unconcern that means he's less unconcerned than he'd like to display.
"Speaking of which." Moving right along, why don't we? "I'm hearing all sorts about your little planetside escapades. Word 'round the water cooler has it that you helped get our boy back, not that he's really in any position to verify." He pauses meaningfully before adding, "yet."
no subject
The next bit of conversation this man - O'Neill judging by nametag (Irish, fancy that) - brings up makes Seth frown a bit.
"I tried," he answers, and he's been given plenty of time to contemplate this now, sat here in this room for ages, picking apart his own failings as a way to pass the time. "Not sure I did much good." Considering the fact Daniel is still unconscious.
He's not sure if this is the kind of thing he should be saying - he should probably argue for his worth and how he helped, convince them he's on their side, or at least not against them. But he can't really make himself brag about something that feels entirely undeserved.
no subject
"And we did get a dial-in, incomplete, just before we dialed out but, you know. We kinda needed to dial out. For obvious reasons." He watches Johnson idly, with more scrutiny than his seemingly uninterested gaze lets on. "Reynolds said you," here he points at Johnson with a tiny spinning gesture, "were the one at the DHD. But y'did say you're from Earth where, as you may or may not know, DHDs are not particularly common. Where'd ya learn a trick like that?"
All the while, Jack's delivery is good-natured and casual. Any minute he'll be asking if Seth caught the game last night, just wait.
no subject
The way O'Neill approaches this seems very familiar. It reminds him of how Gabe questions him, actually. With very practiced casualness, as if to put him on his ease, yet still going for the difficult questions and the veiled accusations.
It's probably a good thing, actually. Seth responds better to that than to bullheaded militarianism. Though O'Neill doesn't have that same performative flair that Gabe does, which, is probably also a good thing.
"Daniel explained it to me. I can't fight, so I was supposed to dial while he provided a distraction and defended the gate," Seth explains, having to pause his eating to get the right words out. "He wrote the symbols down on a piece of paper, I showed it to -- that guy who brought us back." Was that Reynolds? Seth hadn't been conscious enough to read his nametag. "And then I was supposed to wait for him, for Daniel, until he sent... something, so that we could go through."
He frowns in concentration. The tricky thing of having to explain all of this is having to filter out all the dead bodies and the explosions and the terror. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the crumpled piece of paper, putting it on the table. Reynolds had seemed entirely uninterested in it, so Seth had kept it. "Only it didn't work, I punched in all the seven symbols and nothing happened."
no subject
Nearing the conclusion of the possibly-fabricated story, the room gets a knock on the door. The SF on the other side mutters something at Jack with the air of urgency before retreating and closing the door again.
"All righty," says Jack, leaning against the door as he turns back to Johnson. "'Fraid we're gonna have to cut this little session short. Not that I'm not curious about how you managed to accidentally land yourself in the most heavily classified military facility known to man. But, you know. Duty calls."
He knocks on the door and the SF swings it open again from the outside, and Jack promptly makes a big show of acting like he forgot something terribly important, how silly of him.
"I'll see what I can do about the room services here," he re-enters the room to tell Johnson, his face Very Serious. "See if I can't get you a transfer."
Presumably, this promise doesn't pan out. Seth would have no way of knowing, but he might be able to take a guess due to the hours that crawl by without any further visitors.
no subject
Hearing that he might not have to wait in here much longer is promising, but Seth stops himself from becoming too hopeful. He has plenty reason not to trust when he's told stuff like that. The fact it's treated in such a joking matter also doesn't necessarily do a lot to make him trust it.
He pockets the note again, since no one seems overly interested it (you would think if it was that secret, they'd take it from him), and continues to eat until it's all gone. Who knows when they'll deign to feed him again. He only drinks half the water, since their unwillingness to answer his questions when he knocks on the door means he's not actually sure he can count on getting a trip to the loo.
This time he spends a lot of time pacing. He wonders if it's a tactic, trying to break him down, or if they've simply forgotten about him. Neither would surprise him. And neither is anything he'd expect of Daniel, so presumably he's still out. The knowledge that he's going to be alright does a lot to fortify him, though. Though not nearly enough. This is a different Daniel, one who doesn't know him. One who's killed dozen of people in one day. Seth can hardly rely on him to be exactly the same. He's not even sure he wants him to be, because that would mean the Daniel he knows has also done these things. Not unthinkable but... tough to swallow.
Several hours later of pacing, sitting down and getting up in various places in the room, of trying to sort of everything in his head and mostly just falling back into the same self-destructive patterns of thought, Seth has ended up asleep, curled up on the floor near the corner. Pure exhaustion won out against anxiety in the end, though it's by no means a deep or calm sleep.
no subject
Daniel's looked better. One arm's in a sling and a there's a row of butterfly bandages just above his temple and he moves with a gingerness that suggests he's much worse for wear underneath the blue BDUs and probably shouldn't be moving around at all.
"Hey," he says, inching in anyway. "Hey."
He spots Seth in the corner and his stomach wrenches. God. Jack had mentioned they weren't treating him too well, but this goes pretty solidly against standard procedure for treatment of offworld refugees.
"Sorry about - this." Daniel braces his good hand on the table with a sharp, pained intake of breath. "Believe me, if I'd been awake sooner I'd've. Well."
Not that there's much he can do about it now.
no subject
For all his discomfort though, Daniel definitely looks worse. Seth's relief at seeing him is immediately replaced by worry. He wants to hurry over and help support him but he's afraid he'll just end up hurting him instead, so he hovers anxiously, clenching and unclenching his hands uselessly.
"Not your fault," he answers, though knowing Daniel he'll probably have decided Seth is his personal responsibility since he was the one to bring him back, and will no doubt blame himself for anything bad to happen to him. Again, assuming this one is like the one Seth knows. Seth has to keep reminding himself they're not the same.
no subject
"Turns out the IOA was stonewalling us," Daniel explains, voice tense from an inharmonious union of dark frustration and pain. "IOA - well. International Oversight Advisory. They're pretty curious about how an uncleared civilian got through a gate and then back out the other side. Thus," his thumb creeps up beneath his glasses to rub tiredly at one eye, "they're keen on keeping you in one place. Until they decide what they want to do with you."
The hand drops and he shuts his eyes. He just wants to sleep. He wants to sleep for a week. He wants to sleep for a week and before he does that he wants there to be a jet to take Seth home where he can be away from the world he evidently never meant to step into. Or get hurled into, rather. It's terribly confusing. Daniel's pretty sure he looks as awful as he feels, face shadowed and lined in the peak of his weariness and the physical ache of just sitting in one place is dull, insistent, grinding.
His eyes open again with a slight jerk of his chin.
"I'm doing what I can to protect you but there's um. There's no guarantee." Ominous and vague terminology, because Daniel doesn't want to scare Seth with specifics. No one should know the specifics. "I haven't told them anything extensive."
no subject
It's not good news. Who knows how long 'until they decide' means. It could literally mean years. He doesn't even know what it is he's being protected from. It is taking an awful lot of effort not to jump to the worst conclusion right away. Plenty of scenarios are flashing through his mind, all of them unbearable. To Seth it reads a bit like a death sentence.
"So..." he begins, having to make an effort to keep his voice steady and reasonably calm. "I'm a prisoner. Indefinitely. Presumably with no rights, since no one has bothered to read any to me, and -- as a point of curiosity, do human rights even apply if I can't prove I'm from Earth?"
He's not taking this well.
no subject
"That - depends," he manages, breathing in and breathing out in an agonized, uneven cadence. He can't imagine this is doing very much to put Seth at ease, so Daniel forces his voice to steady. "We don't have proof you're even a UK citizen. Last I checked they're trying to pin down your real name seeing as the one you gave us was apparently - ah -" He grimaces sharply at the stab of pain that follows the ill-advised action of shifting his weight, "a pseudonym. Which makes proving the reliability of anything you say a little difficult."
tw: suicide ideation, so much trauma, very heavy
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.
tw: more trauma, more suicide ideation, this thread is awful
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."
tw: actual suicide attempt
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.
tw: injury, guns
"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.
tw: just assume the earlier warnings keep applying
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.
see above re: this thread is in all ways terrible
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.