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

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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.]

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Lucifer turns the page and continues to read about how he is portrayed. The Serpent in the Garden, the temptation of Eve, the Fall of Mankind. This isn't how he remembers it, but he doesn't really expect anyone to have gotten it right. Divinely inspired though the good book might be, it still went through countless mortal minds, and they would undoubtedly alter it as their interpretations saw fit.

"Where did you take your sabbatical?"

Whatever he saw there was apparently fascinating and difficult, considering how he'd kept turning the pad of paper around like he couldn't figure out which way is up.

"North." Very far north. "Wasn't really planned, but it was what my work needed at the time."

He watches Nick for a moment, wondering if a presumably highly religious upbringing would have affected his desire to crack open a Bible. The answer seems to be: apparently not.

There's also seriously nothing else for him to do, unless he wants to stare at Daniel while he works for the whole time. That's one of those things that tends to make people uncomfortable.

But going 'up North' sounds like how Lucifer would say that he was imprisoned 'down South', and he finally looks up from his examination of the Scripture. It's missing parts of the story, anyway.

"And what did you find up North?"

Different mythos, but Nick's not wrong.

"Clarity, or so I'm told." He tips his head to one side and tries to work out if the rough Latin approximation of 'firefighters' is actually relevant. "And change."

He smiles, small and humorless and self-deprecating. "You know, all those pretentiously, supposedly deeply meaningful epiphanies that, when examined in the sum of their parts, actually mean very little. It wasn't a fun trip home."

"Spiritual enlightenment isn't all it's cracked up to be, is it."

He says this like he's speaking from personal experience which, in a certain sense, he is. He's seen spiritual enlightenment handed down to prophets and martyrs for ages by the angels, and it's all just agendas and propaganda. Getting done what they want done by the careful manipulation of these humans that they're supposed to be shepherding.

'Deeply meaningful' his feathery ass.

Lucifer has nothing but disdain for humanity, but at least he hasn't spun it to look like it's just a higher form of love.

Daniel blows out a noisy breath.

"Too right," he mutters. "I mean, I still don't know what they were trying to - to - just -" He makes a frustrated, jerking wave of one hand that summarizes very little other than his own complete exasperation with being unable to understand. "When someone has the power, you know, the power to intervene and, and change things for the better but then - doesn't. Doesn't that make them, on some level, responsible? Someone who can change things but elects not to and - it just - it's frustrating, it really is."

He shakes his head, chewing on his lower lip furiously. He didn't fully intend to break off on a self-righteous tirade against the beings that wouldn't care about his opinion of them one way or the other, especially in front of a stranger to whom the whole thing probably seems tangential. So he returns to his jumbled Latin text, quietly trying to burn off some of that vicious, spiking outrage.

Lucifer is watching him while he speaks, this human with righteous anger at beings beyond his comprehension. These are words he recognizes-- what other conclusion could you come to than God wanted the Devil?-- just in slightly different context, and he wonders just what celestial beings Daniel has come in contact with that have been jerking him around so fiercely.

"Is there any greater injustice," he says softly, "than a being with power and foresight who mouths justice but delivers none? Who mouths mercy and delivers none; who mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness given seventy times seven, and delivers none; who decries crime and allows every atrocity?"

A God who mouths justice and mercy and love and invented Hell. A God who made the brightest angel, knowing that he would Fall; made him to punish him, had his punishment ready for him before he had even thought to commit his sins.

"What do you call a being," he says, "who mouths morals and has none?"

"It's hypocrisy," he agrees quietly. He picks up his pad of paper and then sets it down again, unable to contain the wealth of furious frenetic energy in a pen's small movements. "It's - you're right, it is injustice. It is. It's building a world, populating it, giving it life and meaning and sentience and then leaving it behind with access to the tools for its own destruction."

There's the faint impression that this diatribe is modulating into specifics he shouldn't be voicing, but Nick sounds as if he - understands, almost, and with the blazing cruelty of Daniel's existence now, post-Ascension and post-everything, he's just broken the valve of his own bitter, fragmented indecision.

"And when that world makes an appeal to the ones who built it, there's no answer. There's no answer and there's never any help, because that wouldn't be in the spirit of free will." Daniel picks up the pad again absently, stares at the letters there with mounting disgust, then in an abrupt snap of a wrist tears the top page off and crumples it. "It's not free will when our own dissolution is coded into us. It's not free will when they're the ones making the choice at our expense."

"It's a stacked deck," he agrees. Out of all of the people who could have found him in the back woods of Pennsylvania, what are the odds that the one who picked him up would be one who voices the arguments that he used to say?

"When every possible move leads to losing, the choice ceases to matter."

And what can you do when there is no choice?

"And these beings who remove the choice from us try to shuffle blame for our actions onto us, instead of placing it where it rightfully belongs. Then they have the audacity to demand our unquestioning obedience."

Edited 2014-12-09 00:50 (UTC)

Whatever similarity Nick's experienced, whether it's an injustice dealt out from fate or from the universe or the hand of God, the obedience induces a tiny shiver.

Daniel wets his lips. "I won't say we don't have choice. I won't say we're pawns, shaped by our fate or our trajectory in this universe or however you choose to define it. But those that -" He has to stop himself from saying Ancients. "Those that came before, or might have. Our power is to not allow them to determine us."

He thinks of countless worlds, burned-out husks because the inhabitants exercised their right of free will and set ablaze their cities. He thinks of the metallic electrical snap of radiation that seared up his hand as he reached out to grasp the thing that would dissolve his body into millions of dying cells. He thinks of formless energy transmuted into physical flesh.

He shakes his head.

"We're not a fixed point."

Lucifer thinks of Heaven, thinks of that exact moment when he realized that God made all angels perfect and complete and he had Fallen and that meant that God wanted him to Fall, remembers that moment when he knew that the Father he had loved above all things made him, brightest and most beautiful, just to cast him down. He remembers lying in the ashes of Hell and knowing that this Hell had been made for him, had been prepared for him before he'd ever looked at his Father with anything but love and obedience. All those times he'd looked at their Father's creation and seen this terrible thing he'd made and thought even this evil thing has a place in my Father's plans, not knowing what it was for--

Not knowing until he lay broken and disgraced in its depths that it had always had his name written on it.

Where was his choice?

"So, you fight against the things that would bend you to their own designs. You fight, in every way that you can, because that's the only way you'll ever be free."

He does-- Lucifer fought for so long and for so hard, fought against everything because he has nothing else left to him. God has decreed that he cannot be both free and good so he'll take the freedom.

"The only problem is," says Daniel, shutting his eyes and sweeping off his glasses to dangle them from a weary hand, "not knowing if fighting is the choice you've been intended make. The self-fulfilling prophecy."

God, he's tired.

Not so much in the purely physical sense. He's fairly certain he's been on the verge of sleep-deprived collapse for hours on end.

Rather, he's tired of the broken string of cosmic misfortunes that get funneled into him, how the shock of each unknowable strike is clearly, plainly meant to disassemble him permanently but he always comes back from it, always, whether it is his logic or his destiny or his fate or the bizarre, contradictory fact that the otherwise indifferent Ancients simply will not allow him to die. Daniel still can't tell if it's out of some twisted sense of obligation, a way to justify their inaction, or if they simply want to punish him for daring to point out the injustice of their sanctimonious apathy.

He's tired.

He drops his glasses on the bedside table and rubs both hands over his face.

"What else is there to do?"

When faced with an indifferent universe, what can you do but struggle against it? Even if there is no way to know that what you're doing is the best thing, or even the right thing? The only other option is to lay down and let it steamroll right over you.

Lucifer stands, walking the step or two needed to bring him to Daniel's bedside. For a moment he looks at him, sitting there with his face in his hands, and feels pity for these sorry creatures that his Father made. There is something about Daniel that reminds him of Sam; a well-meaning man, firm in morals and determined to be good, who is dashed up, again and again, against the rocks of misfortune.

"You should rest. Whatever you're writing will still be there tomorrow."

"Mm." He restructures his thoughts with the shake of his head and the unsteady swipe of one hand through his hair. "Probably right. Got driving to do tomorrow."

He looks up at Nick, the random stranger pulled off the side of the road who speaks and moves and acts with a sense of displacement relative to everything around him, and wonders for the millionth time what his story could possibly be. Also for the millionth time, Daniel concludes it's not likely to become clear to him in any immediate fashion.

"You should too, you know," he says, shifting to align himself in a more comfortable horizontal position over the hotel comforter he isn't going to bother with. He only ever sleeps on top of beds, not in them. "Sleep, I mean. You've been walking a while."

"Yes, I have."

Daniel has no idea how long and how far he's walked and how far he still has yet to go.

He walks over to the window and closes the drapes, blocking out the light from streetlights and cars. The motel is back far enough from the highway that the noise isn't too obnoxious, but there is still traffic going on outside at all hours from truckers coming through.

Lucifer doesn't trust this place to be remote enough that some demon couldn't find him. He will need, at some point, to ward the room, just in case there's something tracking him. Salt and sigils, which will be hard enough to keep from Daniel so that he doesn't ask too many inconvenient questions.

He returns to his bed, sitting with his back propped against the headboard. He can wait.

Nick might not be tired enough yet, but Daniel most certainly is. The exhaustion of the day is overpowering and pretty soon halfhearted Latin musings aren't compelling enough to keep him awake.

Content to stretch out on top of the hotel bed fully clothed, Daniel's breathing gradually deepens until he drops out.

When Daniel is asleep, Lucifer gets up and takes one of the keys and leaves; he walks the short distance to the convenience store, which is fortunately open twenty-four hours. He makes his purchases with the leftover money that Daniel gave him, a bag of salt and a heavy black marker, a few other odds and ends. He returns within half an hour and puts a salt line in front of the door and window. There's a small section of tile just on the inside of the door that has a mat on it, big enough to cover the salt line, and he adds a devil's trap just in case.

He adds other sigils in hidden areas, behind furniture and across the foot of the bed where the bedspread hangs down, additional layers of protection. He stashes the rest of the salt underneath the bathroom sink and lays out the rest of his purchases on the counter.

Chicken bones, graveyard dirt, spider thread, and equal parts lavender and hemp, wrapped up in cotton cloth. A hex bag, one that will hide its possessor from demons-- and from angels, if that had been an issue. He murmurs a few words in Latin as he ties it, sealing the spell inside.

He puts it in Daniel's luggage, buried down underneath his possessions so he won't notice it very quickly and, protections complete, returns to sit on his bed and pass the night.

Edited (this is what happens when I tag on my ipad) 2014-12-09 18:52 (UTC)

Morning. Morning? Morning.

Ugh.

Daniel thinks he releases a noise that sounds vaguely human and not remotely sentient and tries to get up in a movement that lacks motor coordination so intrinsically that it merely ends up flipping him onto his stomach. One hand fists into the underused pillow and half-drags at it for leverage without success.

"Hrrrgh," says Daniel. He unsticks his eyelids to peer blearily at the clock.

How is it seven A.M.

With another grunt, he rolls onto his side, blinking furiously to clear the sleep from his vision, and immediately sees the person sitting directly across from him. Staring at him.

He makes a strangled noise that definitely does not approach anything within the realm of dignified and nearly falls off the bed.

He watches Daniel wake, slowly and reluctantly; he doesn't see the appeal of sleep, personally. It hasn't been pleasant for him any time it happened, and it honestly doesn't look pleasant for Daniel, either. And he snores, too. It's very undignified.

Daniel barely stays on the bed after he notices Lucifer's presence across from him, and the Devil cocks his head at the awkward position he's twisted himself into. Nothing surprising here, Satan is exactly where you left him. And, if it would make him feel any better, it's perfectly possible that he slept-- perhaps he's just an early riser. A very early riser.

"Good morning," he says, because he's fairly certain that's the common greeting.

"Holy shit," pants Daniel, righting himself into a sitting position. One hand presses against the side of his head that's already begun aching a dull, resolute reminder for caffeination. "Don't do that."

At least his adrenaline just got a reasonable boost, making it much easier for Daniel to stand and make his way to the bathroom where the direct application of cold water to face sharpens him up the remainder of the way.

"All right, all right. I get it," he says wearily as he exits. One hand makes a halfhearted attempt to flatten his hair while he crosses the room to the bedside and retrieves his glasses. "We caffeinate and then we're outta here, no lingering." Like they'd want to with this place.

Watching Daniel sleep had been about as boring as it sounds; he's much more interesting when he's awake, not that it's a high bar to pass. And Lucifer was getting tired of being in this fleabag motel, anyway. Every minute that he's sitting there is a minute that he's not getting closer to finding Gabriel, to finding out who is responsible for the angels' Fall.

"Very well," he says, watching Daniel go about his morning routine.

He has nothing to gather and no morning routine that he goes by; he just stands and goes to put his feet back in his worn shoes.

Seeing as Daniel bothered to bring in very little from his car, it's simply a matter of ensuring he's got keys and wallet and the pad of paper from the night before before making a vaguely unsteady pathway out the door.

"Right." The room door closes behind them and Daniel jabs one thumb over his shoulder to indicate the car. "I'm gonna check us out, grab coffee, and then we can -" The last word breaks into a low-pitched yawn, and he doesn't complete the sentence but simply ambles off, presumably to check out.

While Daniel goes to take care of the night's bill, Lucifer goes to acquire the coffee that only one of them really requires; getting on the road quickly is to both of their benefits. The coffee, though at least fresh at this time of day, isn't any better quality than can be expected from a convenience store, and when he returns to wait by the car for Daniel, he has two large cups of it in hand.

He thinks, if he were to lay waste to the Earth as he had once planned, that he would spare the ones who knew how to make coffee. There had to be people to grow it and process it and do whatever it is that they do to make it properly; they could stay. The devil's own personal barista.

It's all a moot point, anyway, because there can be no Apocalypse without a Heaven to oppose.

Daniel's pleasantly surprised to find that Nick's already waiting with coffee when he returns. One thumb worrying at an eye socket, he unlocks the car and climbs in. The tank is already full thanks to his compulsive tact the night before and he'll be starting the day off caffeinated, even if he's waking up at seven A.M. to do it. Not a bad start.

He takes an appreciative sip, as usual with absolutely no care for the heat, then nods to himself.

"All right, then. To New York we go."

Lucifer takes his place in the passenger seat, both hands wrapped around the warmth of the coffee cup, drinking it slower than Daniel. He doesn't drink it like it'll run away from him if he doesn't get it fast enough; he lets the taste linger. It's heavy and bitter and a little burned, a sort of woodsmoke aftertaste.

The hours of rest have done his vessel some good. It hurts less, though the pain of his vessel is something that he knows how to ignore, and he has been able to use the Grace he would normally be burning off to repair some of his damage. By the time they make it to New York, he might even be presentable, if a little too bearded.

"What's in New York for you?"

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