bigapplesauce | a thankless job but somebody's got to do it [closed]

Current Location: Wilmot's End
Current Music: July 18th (still a little backdated yup)

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a thankless job but somebody's got to do it [closed]

Seth's not entirely sure how much he likes being called up as a newbie's guide to superpowers. Any recognition is still a bit too much for him, and he doesn't like meeting at a pre-determined time with someone he doesn't know. But Wilmot's End is just about the only place he feels is safe, neutral ground.

He'd actually showed up pretty early, thinking he might scout for other newbies with fresh powers they might like to get rid of, but he's felt far too anti-social to actually approach anyone. His anxiety's been kicking in, much earlier than he'd like. It's a worrying trend that he's trying very hard not to think about too much.

So he's sitting a little towards the back, nursing a drink and watching the door from his booth. Looking for anyone who looks a little lost and out of place, like they're searching for someone.

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"Uhhh. Sort of." Daniel's not really sure where his allegiance falls. So far he hasn't heard anything stellar about the rebels or Romac, but he hasn't heard anything morally condemnable either. Yet, anyway. He's decided to reserve judgment on that front for now. "Lucy's moving out so she said I could have the apartment since I, ah, don't really have anywhere else to go. Not really sure where that puts me in terms of political statement. No one's approached me about it." He shrugs, noncommittal.

Seth looks up at that. Well, that's promising. "You might want to keep it that way," he answers. "No one's gonna force you to do anything unless they decide it's definitely in their best interest, but just the same, it's best if they don't know too much about you."

Just saying Daniel might not want to talk quite so freely about being Ascended and all that. Then again, if all the really active powers he has is making paperclips, and he doesn't seem like he'd be out making trouble or being a threat, then he'll probably be alright. Seth's glad of that.

Daniel nods slowly. He can see the reasoning.

"That makes sense. Unfortunately, keeping a low profile isn't really one of my better talents." He smiles bitterly at the thought. Sad but true. "What about you?"

"As unattached as possible," he answers, leaning back in his seat. "Anyway, when your friend makes you fight Godzilla in broad daylight, you get a new measurement for keeping 'low profile'."

Yeah apparently that's going to come up from multiple people, Daniel. It was a memorable day.

"Godzilla." Daniel blinks rapidly for a minute. "That was - that was you? Yeah, no, can't imagine that'd be good for, for doing that." Wow, okay. Lucy wasn't joking about the Godzilla thing.

"This friend of yours - his power is, I'm guessing, what? Hard light constructs?"

Seth frowns a little. "...If by that you mean illusions, then yeah," he answers slowly. Among very many other powers, but let's not get into that. "It was admittedly very cool, getting to defeat a giant lizard," he adds, because despite the terror and the publicity and the thinking Gabe died a terrible death for a while there, it was. More and more, he just remembers it as a bit of an adventure, what with the lack of any serious consequences.

"I can imagine." He laughs a little, then stops. "Actually, no, wait. I can't. Godzilla. Like. Wow. That's - that's definitely...ambitious."

Seth smiles, watching Daniel with amusement. "Yeah, I... Wouldn't have done it entirely voluntarily, let's put it that way." He shrugs. He doesn't think he could've imagined it before it happened, either.

"So. Who are you, Daniel Jackson?" he asks, resting his elbows on the table and lifting the glass to his mouth. "What do you do, what's your world like, that sort of thing." Since at the moment all he really knows is that he's spent some time on a higher plane, and he's curious.

"My world." Daniel takes an unnaturally large gulp of beer to buy himself some time because he's...not sure how to answer that question. He's relatively sure the SGC doesn't exist in this world - he ran a search for USAF personnel and hadn't come up with anyone he knows and if there were an SGC in this universe, they'd definitely be here already - but all the same, his life is...weird. He's not sure if it surpasses Godzilla-weird though, so there's that.

"Well, I'm an archaeologist," he offers. "Archaeologist, linguist, and, on occasion, Earth's chosen diplomatic voice in interstellar affairs. And that'd be the abridged version." He smirks a little, sardonic, as he lifts the bottle again. "I'm a peaceful explorer."

Oh, he's met another space traveler, great. At least this one isn't an alien himself. Magic and all that stuff seems comfortably close to powers, but it's taken him some time to really get used to outer space stuff and demi-gods and fucking Lucifer and all that shit. Not that he thinks he'll get used to Satan being around.

He smiles a little at the description though. Peaceful explorer definitely seems to fit with Seth's first impression of him. "So, Earth's gotten to the point of meeting aliens, huh? What year are you from?"

Edited 2014-09-29 07:38 (UTC)

"We have, but it's classified so, uh. Don't tell anyone," he jokes weakly, shrugging. "2005, last I checked. We actually haven't done so bad for ourselves, either. Still alive, still spinning, though it's gotten really close a few times. Really, really close."

He tilts his head to one side. "And you...don't seem all that surprised. Are aliens a thing where you come from too?"

2005, really. He wonders if they had met aliens in his home universe at that point, and he just didn't know about it. He wonders if they have here -- well, obviously, with the help of the rift, but that's different. That's not so much exploration and diplomacy so much as the universe randomly throwing aliens at them, much to both Earth's and the aliens' discontent.

"Not on my version of Earth, no. At least not to my knowledge," he answers. "But they sure are here, and I've been here a while, so." He shrugs. "You've got some current events to catch up though, I suppose. The Rift actually moved me backwards in time, but only by like, a week."

Edited 2014-09-29 08:17 (UTC)

"Yeah, apparently I'm, what? Eight years behind? Granted, not as big a leap as 3000 B.C., but that's...um. A long story. And hard to explain." Especially since Daniel doesn't know the particulars of that one himself. The eventual explanation of what, exactly, they'd done to the timeline had been tenuous at best.

"Well, aside from the Rift thing, I'm pretty much in the dark about current events. Anything particularly impressive happen in that time, or...?"

3000 B.C.? Yeah alright. Time traveler as well, then. Maybe. Or at least one-time time traveler. For someone who got superpowers by a freak storm, Seth's life seems pretty mundane in comparison.

He frowns thoughtfully at the question, taking a drink and considering what exactly has happened between then and now.

"Well, it's hard to know exactly what's relevant for your universe as well, but..." He scratches his chin a bit. Maybe just go for the things that apply to both his home universe and here and hope for the best. "You've got a black president. Ummm." What the hell's even happened, it's difficult to draw random significant things up on demand. "Pluto no longer counts as a planet?" He shrugs and gestures vaguely. "They finally got Bin Laden? I dunno, do you have anything specific?"

"Not, uh, not really. No." Daniel watches, bemused, as Seth attempts to summarize the eight-year universe gap. He rubs at his chin with the back of a hand. "Pluto's out, huh? I actually know a couple people who'd be pleased about that. And a couple that'd be offended, but. You know."

He takes another pull at his beer as he mulls that over.

"And you? Just a week out of sync? That's gotta be a little weird."

"Unfortunately I hadn't memorised any lottery numbers," he replies with a slight smile. There was really not much useful knowledge about the future he could apply, he just sort of had to live through a week twice. Probably not a bad thing, since obviously he took a while to adjust to the idea of being stuck in a completely different universe and figuring out what to do with himself there. Trying to deal with the fact he'd never see Kelly again. Losing someone he cared about, but at least this time it wasn't his fault. Of course he'd tried to look his friends up, but no luck. He wonders how Daniel's taking that.

"Got family back home? Friends, girlfriend?" he asks, deciding that would probably the easiest way to ask. Daniel seems pretty forthright about this stuff.

"Some family." He nods to himself for a minute, lost in thought. "Well, I say family. Friends, technically. Coworkers. When your job has you jumping round the galaxy twice a week it's a little difficult to maintain outside relations." Not that Daniel's ever tried. He can't even remember the names of the other people in his old apartment building. "Don't have any living family, so."

Another shrug. It's not lost on him that he's talking about this while in New York, not so terribly far away from one of his worst childhood memories. Yeah, he's going to avoid elaborating on that if he can.

So he levels on Seth, with his usual too-incisive, too-intense look of interest.

"And who'd you leave behind?"

Jumping round the galaxy, huh.

He nods at Daniel's answer, and then pauses at the question. Daniel's intense interest makes him feel just a little awkward, like he's not used to being so... focused on, or something.

"Well... Technically only one person I hadn't already left behind," he answers with a frown, looking down at his drink instead of meeting Daniel's eyes. "I was on my way to Uganda to live there with my girlfriend while she defused landmines. But... Like I said, nine months ago." He shrugs.

"Oh. Oh, wow. That...can't have been easy for you." Whoops.

Daniel considers himself lucky. At least the people he left behind might be able to eventually figure out what happened to him and then do everything in their power to get him back. But it's occurred to him that he might the only one on that front.

"I'm sorry," he says, and he means it. If there's anything to be said about Daniel inadvertently bringing up sensitive issues, it's that he does it far too often and knows it.

Seth shrugs a bit again. "Not easy for anyone, and I left less than most do. Time and place is familiar for me, and I've made new friends. You get used to it," he answers, downplaying his problems as usual. And he's finally spent more time out and about than he did in imprisonment, which is making him a bit more okay with being stuck here. Although he'd very much like to leave New York, go somewhere far away from rifts and rebels and all that shit.

"Doesn't make it any easier." The beer's almost empty, meaning Daniel has nothing left to do with his hands, so he sets to work peeling at the label on the beer bottle, shredding strip after strip from the condensation-slick glass. "I hate to say it, but I've actually sorta gotten used to the frequent dying miles. Doesn't mean I like having to deal with it."

Seth notices Daniel's fiddling, and catches the eye of the bartender and gestures for refills.

He pauses a bit at what Daniel says, though. "So... Exactly how many times have you died?" he asks slowly. Because it's starting to sound like a fair amount, actually.

Daniel laughs bitterly.

"You know I don't actually know how many times it's been?" God, there's a reason he tries not to think about it, "Nine Lives Jackson" nicknames notwithstanding. "It just sorta...got to the point where they stopped making official statements. No funerals, or, or, I mean, hell, after a while they wouldn't even pack up the apartment. It's never any one thing, it's just..."

His fingers never stop their assault on the bottle label. He's accumulated a small heap of fragmented paper in front of him, and he pokes at it a little miserably.

"Painful," he finishes finally, swallowing hard. "And...painful. And usually my fault."

Seth regrets asking pretty much immediately. He bites his lip and tries to come up with something comforting or motivational to say, or something to lighten the mood that won't seem terribly crass, but he comes up short. He wants to reach out and pat Daniel's shoulder or something, but it would be awkward across the table, and probably awkward in general, so all he can do is feel bad for asking.

"Sorry, man..." he says quietly, and means it. Must've been shit for everyone involved, not knowing if he'd come back or not, and he can't even imagine being the one to go through with all the dying.

He tries for another smile, but it just comes out looking pained. He's made things uncomfortable. Again.

"Well, hey," he says lightly. "I'm here now, right? And the plus side is, well, people who threaten to freeze your insides solid just don't scare you the way they used to."

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