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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"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."

Seth frowns, his guilt replaced with worry. "Who the hell said that?" he asks, sounding angrier than he meant to. If there are people threatening Daniel like that, he'd like to know whether they have the ability and inclination to follow through with it.

"Uh." He tries to remember. That had been all in all a pretty weird night and Daniel's lucky it hadn't ended in him getting killed gruesomely again. "Not sure who exactly. 'What' might be the more semantically precise phrasing. Called itself 'Nick' but, uh. Yeah, remember those Ascended instincts and memories I mentioned? Well one look at him and they went off. Like. All of them. All at once. Big time. Whatever it is, it's...it's big. And old. And, probably, dangerous." Which, of course it is.

Seth has a pretty bad feeling about this.

"Was he.." Seth assumes it's a he based on the name. He tries to think of how to describe the man Gabe had shown him. "Was he like, bit taller than you, short blond hair.. Late 40s or early 50s, strong brow...?" he asks. This would really be a lot easier if he had Gabe's power of illusion and could just show it.

"Yeah, actually." Daniel looks up from his collection of shredded label, startled. "How'd you know?"

"That..." Seth answers slowly, unsure how to put this in a non-horrifying way. But there's probably no way to. "May have been Lucifer. As in Satan." Welcome to New York, Daniel.

"As in...the Satan? Like, what, we're talking real, actual, Judeo-Christian, Morningstar, fire-and-brimstone Satan? He's, he's real, and he's here, and he's, he's vengeful and mighty and...Satan?"

That takes him a minute. He sits, mouth open as he processes, torn between horrified realization and, ridiculously, fascination.

"Okay, so no wonder I didn't like him."

Seth nods in affirmation. Getting a second-opinion, so to speak, from Daniel's Ascended powers and all helps confirm it too. Not that really mistrusted Gabe on this, given recent events. Seth's just glad he hasn't met him himself. Gonna give that one a wide berth.

Daniel's final comment makes Seth unexpectedly snort into his drink. No wonder indeed.

"All right, so maybe I noticed there was something wrong with him right away." This unexpected bit of news has made Daniel skittish and he takes off at full tilt. "Not to mention the casual telekinesis, you know, just floating bottles his way like it wasn't a big deal. Which, as far as powers go, telekinesis is pretty up there so that just made it really obvious there was something off about him, you know, in general, but then he just happened to mention the genesis of the universe, offhand, like he was there and, well, I might have possibly spent most of the time baiting him and trying to learn what he was and oh my god he could have killed me."

He pales a little at that last part, not so much in regards to the dying as the unpleasantness the dying no doubt would have entailed.

His brief amusement doesn't last as Daniel continues to go on. Especially when he reaches the killing bit, and just the look on his face.

"You might want to just avoid him from now on," Seth suggests mildly. That is definitely Seth's strategy. He knows he wouldn't stand a chance, and he figures he's probably enough of a coward to follow through on this strategy. (Never mind the time he stopped a zombie apocalypse, or the time an alternate version of him apparently defeated the Nazis.)

"Well, I." He wets his lips nervously because, yeah, no, Daniel's not really one for the avoidance policy. Especially not if other people are in the line of fire. "You know how they tell you to pick your battles?" He smirks, a small and cold grimace, laden with self-directed scorn. "Yeah, I'm really, really bad that. In fact I, uh..." He considers leaving it at that for a minute, but since they're apparently baring their souls here, he might as finish what's been started. "I think it's bullshit. I think we have that obligation, if it's in our power, to intervene. If this guy - Satan, Lucifer, whatever he is - is out to hurt people, I'm gonna do what I can to stop it. However much that's worth here, anyway."

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