applesaucedream | Sweeter than the First Time [Open to All]

Current Music: Evening of August 14th/Morning of August 15th, 2013

Sweeter than the First Time [Open to All]

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Hello, dreamers of Manhattan. The Rift knows that things have been kind of rough, lately. The last dream didn't go as well as it had hoped. Consider this an apology of sorts, and a hearkening back to the good times you've shared.

It's a grand old (and potentially familiar) cabin house that the dreamers will find themselves wandering. The furniture is plentiful and comfortable, the floors are strewn with cushions and blankets, and there are cheerful fires burning in the grates. It seems a little odd that the house still manages to be on the chilly side despite looking so warm, yet it is.

Oh, well. You'll just have to find another dreamer or two and ~~spoon up and fall asleep like little baby cats~~ get cozy. It shouldn't be difficult; most of the dreamers (excepting those with strong telepathic defenses or deeply ingrained cuddle-averse personalities) will find themselves feeling friendlier than usual, along with an almost overwhelming desire to snuggle up to someone. How convenient that the house seems designed for that very purpose!

~~And if some of the cushions are Hello Kitty themed, well, that's just coincidence.~~

[OOC: Standard dream party rules apply. Characters will be affected by the dream-whammy to whatever degree makes the most sense for them, and will remember or forget the events of the dream at the player's discretion. Backtag into infinity.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Want to maybe rethink that 'nice dream' thing?

Lucifer isn't exactly sure what this dream is supposed to be-- he is both cuddle-averse and telepathically resistant, so sort of like the metaphysical equivalent of a hedgehog-- but since Daniel is here and in plain view, he will refrain from attempting to a.) leave or b.) kill anyone until he has at least had the chance to speak with him. It's always entertaining.

He approaches Daniel's chair from behind and holds a cup of coffee out at his elbow, where it will be noticeable.

It's the movement in the corner of his eye that does it, the curl of steam that pulls at his attention until he tracks it to its origin, then to its receptacle, then to the arm holding the receptacle, and then -

Daniel makes a small, startled, probably not-very-dignified noise and jumps in his seat, and the book takes an unannounced leave to land, face down and forgotten, on the floor.

It takes him a minute to process.

"Uh." An eloquent start. "...Hi." And an eloquent finish.

"Hello, Daniel."

Don't mind him, he's just going to keep holding that coffee out there. You might want to take it, because it'd be terribly rude not to.

"You seem well. Are you enjoying yourself?"

Engage in small talk with Satan, Dan. It's not like your life can get weirder at this point.

Daniel breathes out a gusty sigh and, having no idea what else he's supposed to do, takes the cup with visible reluctance. It's coffee. It smells like coffee. Dream-coffee? Why does that even matter? Why is Satan bringing him coffee.

"I was," he says dryly, raising his eyebrows pointedly. He's always been blessed with a profound lack of a filter when it comes to incredibly powerful beings that can snap his neck with a look, but in the veil of a dream his already tenuous grasp of self-restraint seems to have failed him completely. "And you, what, just figured you'd pop by again and check in?"

Dream-coffee does, indeed, look, taste, and smell like the real thing. It's a dream, so it's just going to pull from Daniel's own memories of what it's like. And with none of the calories.

"I'm detecting a little hostility, Daniel," he says, leaning against the back of the good doctor's chair. "I really don't see why. I don't intend to harm you."

He's just your ~~friendly~~ neighborhood Satan. And after giving him free, excellent wifi everywhere he goes, you'd think a man would be a little more appreciative.

"How astute of you." And just like that, the calm, pleasant atmosphere generated by the dream feels like it's all but evaporated. Daniel retrieves his lost book and snaps it shut, laying it on the chair's arm, and eyes the coffee uncertainly. Forgive him if he's hesitant to drink it. He's going to be a little wary of gifts dispensed to him by Satan, even if they're of the dream variety.

"No, I really can't imagine why I'd be so unsettled," Daniel continues evenly, still studying the cup's contents with apparent doubt. "Given that you're, you know, the Devil, all that pesky suspicion just seems moot."

"I know," he says. "What can I say-- I have terrible PR."

Because clearly his problem here is bad public relations. Though, given that God is supposed to be the 'good guy' here, maybe it's not so far off.

If Lucifer is offended by Daniel's suspicion, he makes no appearance of it.

"And I thought that you were fond of coffee. Is something not to your liking? You bought some for me, so it's only fair that I get some for you."

Daniel opts to set the cup down the chair's arm as well and makes an effort to carefully ignore it.

"It's the principle of the thing," he says, reining back his wry frustration and reshaping it into something a little more delicate. "I tend to be a little wary of gifts if they happen to be Satanic in origin, dream constructs notwithstanding." That includes the wi-fi. Daniel will only concede to using it once, and that was when he realized that in the effort to lose his conversation partner, he'd managed to get himself completely lost.

"An arbitrary distinction. I'm an angel, just as my brother Gabriel is. Are you so suspicious of him, as well?"

He really should use the wifi more; it's practically limitless as far as downloading and uploading and whatever other kind of loading you'd like to do on it. And it streams movies like no one's business.

"Besides, I told you that there would be blessings upon you. I'm a being of my word, Daniel, and I don't renege."

"Well, that depends. Gabe, for instance, did not threaten to freeze my intestines when I first met him." And then there was the split second where Daniel actually did think Gabe was Lucifer before Seth arrived to clarify, loosely defined sensory capabilities seemingly limited in their distinguishing between angelic beings.

Daniel picks the book back up off the arm but doesn't open it, simply running his fingers up and down its spine in an unconscious display of his fraying nerves. He stills speaks carefully, threading his words cautiously between one another. "For another, has it occurred to you that I might not - want your blessings?"

"You practically asked me to freeze your intestines."

Daniel did pretty much say 'come at me bro' to the Devil. Bad plan. Even Iman had thought it was a poor life decision, and she was drunk at the time.

But he gives Daniel's comment due consideration, standing there and tapping one of his fingers against his lips. He really hadn't bothered giving such a thing as Daniel's preferences on the matter any thought-- who would refuse blessings from an angel? And it's not as though they'd ever asked for permission for blessings. That's now how it worked. You got blessed and you damn well liked it.

"I would think that you'd rather have them than the alternative."

Which would be having Satan pissed at you.

Yes, all right, Daniel will be the first to admit that brazenly taunting the Devil may not have been his wisest tactical choice ever. In his defense, he hadn't known he was the Devil, but that's hardly an excuse. He was lucky to have gotten out of there unmaimed, much less alive.

"Is there no middle ground, then?" he can't help but ask, faintly exasperated. "I get shoehorned into either 'blessed by Satan' or 'destructively loathed and therefore probably doomed' but I don't get a neutral option?" That'd be a little too much to ask the universe, almost, given Daniel's experience. It's a bizarre ultimatum that he wishes he'd never gotten involved in but, well, there's no changing that now.

It would have been a shame if Lucifer had killed him back then, before he had realized how much Daniel is like Sam Winchester. No one can ever be quite like Sam-- he is the only one who is worthy, the only one who was ever truly worthy-- but Daniel bears more than a passing resemblance to him, and that works in his favor.

"For others? Of course. There will always be those who are below my notice," he says, watching the good doctor with his head at a birdlike tilt and his eyes hooded. "But I don't think I could ever be indifferent to you, Daniel Jackson."

Daniel's shoulders hunch a little at that one; he won't pretend he didn't get an actual, horrifying chill following those words. He has to scramble to recover his linguistic prowess but finds himself more or less speechless, and not in a great way.

"But, okay," he stammers, well-worded as always, "why?"

He looks at Satan in complete, honest, desperate perplexity, searching eyes that initially seem deceptively human for an answer he doesn't know how to grasp.

"Why are you so interested in me? Are, are anagogical dream roadtrip discussions really so valuable to you? 'Cause, well, no offense, but I don't think that's the only factor at work here." He doesn't know how to justify the Devil's new and unnerving fascination in him. He just knows that it's there, and he doesn't like it.

"I can take interest in whatever I please."

And that includes anthropologists with specializations in Egyptology who act and sort of look like his former vessel. Sorry, Daniel, it's just the luck of the draw, and you got dealt the genetic hand that makes you Sam Winchester lite.

"And what isn't interesting about a human who has ascended multiple times to a higher plane of existence?"

And also the Sam thing.

And oh, how Daniel regrets bringing that up. He really does. Just his luck, being this statistical and scientific anomaly that keeps dying and keeps breathing, surviving even a few ascents up several planes and then some rough demotions back down again. Mentioning that sort of thing offhand to Satan was bound to have some repercussions.

"It's really not very interesting," he lies, completely unconvincingly. "Or maybe it could be, but it's not like I remember." Mostly. There are those on-and-off almost extrasensory capabilities that mostly just ping when, as far as he can tell, he runs into something vaguely higher-plane-ish. But it's sporadic, unknowable - leftover from Ascension? Bolstered by the Rift? Exclusive to the angels from Lucifer's universe? There's no way of knowing, short of maybe letting Lucifer poke around there himself and Daniel is - not entertaining that idea.

"Of course you don't remember. Your brain would never be able to contain that much information, nevertheless process and comprehend it."

He could go brain-spelunking in Daniel's noggin to try to find the source of his weirdness, but that could also damage him. And with his Grace limited in this universe, he isn't too eager to do damage that he isn't certain that he can repair.

Daniel is interesting. Daniel is potentially useful. And Lucifer has a certain sentimentality when it comes to his vessels, or things associated with them. It's not the same, being stuck here in Nick when he knows what it's like to be in his true vessel-- it's like wearing a suit that doesn't quite fit right. He thinks, if he were ever in a position where he was forced to choose a new vessel, that Daniel would not be a terrible fit. Not Sam, but better than poor Nick.

The unfortunate drawback to descending - the loss of all that knowledge. But it when it boiled down to the choice between actively helping and simply knowing he could help, Daniel came down on the side of hard altruism, unsurprisingly. And was promptly exiled, memory-scrubbed, and abandoned for it.

"Right. I can't remember, so I can't exactly be useful in that area, if that's what you're interested in." And he really hopes, for everyone's sake, that it isn't. Ascended beings didn't always stick to their own universes, after all, and the last thing anyone needs is Lucifer of all people figuring out exactly how they managed that. "So I'm back to square one. Nothing special."

Unless he's simply - interesting. Daniel doesn't know what to make of that, seeing as small, exceptionally vocal creatures tend to get quickly crushed beneath one's heel rather than kept alive for amusement's sake.

"What you remember is immaterial. The things that you have been through have left marks on you that are more than just physical, Daniel."

The sensitivity and enhanced perception, for one thing. Whatever process it is that takes a human and makes them ascend, it fundamentally changes that person in some fashion. Lucifer knows a thing or two about the fundamental alteration of humans, and here is a wholly different specimen for him to look at.

Small, vocal creatures also sometimes get put in cages rather than trod on.

"Oh, don't I know it." It's said quietly, fringed with self-disgust. It wasn't just that his body had been restored - it had been left with traces, maybe fragments of knowledge he'd meant to drag to Earth with him and maybe simply pieces that had come along for the ride regardless of intent.

Which makes him more than a little wary over how much Lucifer is willing to invest, for lack of a better word, in examining this. Not that Daniel wouldn't mind knowing what's going on in his head that he can't fully detect, but he doubts he wants the literal Devil performing that cranial examination.

"What's that make me, then? A subject? Your exciting latest project?" he asks, dry as he can make the words without suffusing them in the undercurrent of dread that that's exactly what he is to Satan.

"Daniel," he says with a long-suffering sigh, "must you make the worst of everything?"

As much as Daniel might try to hide it, Lucifer can feel the anxiety radiating off of him, as though he's just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Is it so hard to believe that we might have common goals? I want to leave this universe, and I know that you do as well. I don't think that we've been brought here by random chance, and understanding what it was about us that attracted the Rift's attention might be key to figuring out how to get out again."

He gives Daniel something of an indulgent look, like he's patiently explaining a simple concept to a simple child.

"And, all-in-all, I'm not a poor ally to have, Daniel."

The concerned frown on Daniel's face deepens. But that's just the problem - Daniel doesn't want Satan to be an ally, or an associate, or anything. But forcing him to be the opposite would simply be a death sentence, or the Daniel Jackson equivalent since death sentences don't seem to have their typical permanence when extended to him.

"What, you, you think we were brought together on purpose?" He doesn't want to entertain the notion that the Rift could have placed him here specifically for Satan's benefit. He really doesn't. But he only arrived a few days before the Devil himself, and they met almost immediately after the bloodbath that was Lucifer's introduction to Manhattan and - oh god. Oh god. "Like some - like, you mean fate?"

Daniel has a lot of goals in life. Being destined as something of a secondhand vessel or affiliate for Satan really isn't one of them.

"I wouldn't call the Rift a vehicle of fate, exactly," he says, "but it's very coincidental, don't you think? Especially that there are multiple people from the same universe here. What are the odds, out of all the people in all the universes that it could have picked from, for it to, say, have randomly selected Gabriel and myself?"

The odds were too astronomical for it to have been simple chance. The probabilities of randomly picking two people from the same universe, and from within a few months of each other in the timeline, is so remote as to be basically impossible.

"Even if the Rift isn't sentient or sapient, you have to admit that the only reasonable explanation is that it has some sort of criteria for the people it takes. And, for one reason or another, both of us matched, Daniel."

"All right," Daniel concedes delicately, staring fixedly at the faint wisps of steam rolling off the surface of the disturbingly real coffee. "So I'll, I'll give you that. We have - something - in common." It's true, what he's saying about the odds. It's simply so unlikely that multiple entities from the same universe would be drawn out and displaced to here, exit point Manhattan, within months of each other. The Rift's cruel sense of humor? Does it even have a sense of humor?

With visible effort, Daniel forces himself to look the Devil in the eyes again, trying and failing not to shudder at the veil of darkened presence he can barely perceive. The embodiment of sin and destruction and pride, clad in an innocuous man and chatting with Daniel over coffee.

He continues despite it. "But no more or less than any of the other rifties. They're victims of the same set of circumstances that we are. There's nothing about our - association, or relationship, or whatever you wanna call it, that makes us any different."

He hopes.

"Maybe, maybe not."

At least he's acknowledging the possibility that there's only a tenuous connection between them, but he doubts it. What are the odds that the Rift would bring in a man who is so very similar to his former vessel, and then would bring them together so quickly?

Or, perhaps, it's that they would find each other so quickly, no intervention by the Rift required. His connection to Sam had been like gravity, pulling him to Lucifer like iron to magnets. Inevitable. Perhaps Daniel has been drawn by the same force, albeit more weakly-- a paramagnetic mineral instead of Sam's ferrous.

"I noticed a trend, Daniel. You, myself, and Iman arrived here within a few days of each other. Aziraphale arrived a week before I did. Two angels, one former Ascended, and a dimensional physicist. All people who operate on or within a different plane of existence, and doesn't it seem odd that the Rift would bring in several of those all at the same time?"

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