So Who's Going to Watch You Die? [closed]

[peacefulexplorer]

Daniel scans the intersection for the twentieth time in the past five minutes, hands crammed in his pockets. He's not anxious and he's certainly not fidgeting. Well. Not overly.

And if he were, hypothetically, fidgeting and shuffling and shifting in one place restlessly, it'd be completely justified given present circumstances. He's just a little on edge, mostly thanks to shared group dreams which are, apparently, possible - something he's recently discovered in the worst way imaginable. He'd been hoping all morning that leaving the apartment and interacting with the real world for a bit would brush away the last few echoes of the nightmare, but there's still a chill in his spine regardless. Expected, but no less unwelcome.

So, yes, he's a little concerned, primarily about Seth. It's true that Seth has lived here for longer - much longer - and he'd acted like he was used to the shared nightmarish experiences by now. Daniel has more than a few issues with that sentiment (the foremost being that horrible nightmares in which people get impaled and imprisoned and die should not be something one gets used to, personal history with nightmares aside) but he's also hoping Seth can clear up a few questions about the Dreaming. It might not have been real in the strictest sense of the word, but it had certainly felt like it.

Also he is worried.

That line of thought just keeps looping on back.

Daniel's phone buzzes, a text from Seth. Soon the phone returns to his pocket as he crosses his arms, takes stock of the intersection again, and waits.

Comments

[powerdealer]

Seth only takes a little over a minute to get there after the last text - he'd been by another exit one street up, but it's always hard to knows which exits come out where if you're not used to them.

At this point he is much more relaxed than Daniel, but - aside from the fact he is at least a little more used to these horrific nightmares, shared or otherwise - that is probably primarily due to the self-medicating he did this morning. Which he absolutely shouldn't have done in the house, he knows, but it was the middle of the night, and it was highly unlikely for anyone to come knocking on his door.

He spots Daniel across the street - the only person at the intersection standing still without waiting for traffic lights - and jogs across on a red light since there are no cars too close.

"Hey. You alright?" he greets, coming to a stop. When Seth had spotted him, he hadn't looked particularly alright, rather tense in fact, but he hasn't got a hole through his midriff, so that's already better than the last time he saw him.

[peacefulexplorer]

Daniel relaxes marginally when he sees Seth heading toward him. Rationally he knows Seth's fine and has been fine but it doesn't hurt to have reassuring visual confirmation - no dislocated arm, no broken back, no blood, no physical trauma - and he seems, at least outwardly, all right.

"Ah," Daniel hesitates in response, "that's relative." He smiles weakly. "What about you?" He is the one who died after all.

[powerdealer]

Seth presses his lips together, considering. "Well... It wasn't as bad as that time I got ripped apart by zombies," he answers and smiles to show that yes, he is in fact alright. Although actually, in a lot of ways this one had been worse - less physically horrifying, but a lot more emotionally painful.

He jerks his head a bit to indicate for Daniel to follow, and heads west. "Was that your first shared dream here?" he asks, because that might be part of why Daniel is so unsettled.

[peacefulexplorer]

Daniel follows, hands in pockets again, trying not to think about nightmares involving being torn up by zombies and mostly failing.

"It was," he replies, studying the ground that is nothing like water-slick endless gray walls. "I don't think it really occurred to me that it even was a dream until, well - after." He shrugs, a jerking, disconcerted movement, and continues to stare downward. That had been a fun waking experience.

"Zombies, huh?" He tries for another smile but it largely comes out a grimace. "So that, uh, that place we were in - did that come out of my head or yours?" He hadn't recognized it at the time, but then there are still things buried in his head that he doesn't know about.

[powerdealer]

"Not mine," he answers. "Did you meet other people in there?" Because Seth had only met Daniel, but there's something about Rift dreams that are just... more tangible, and less easy to bend. His own dreams, even while shared, often don't logistically make much sense, even if he sometimes only realises once he's woken up. Rift dreams just seem less malleable, a little more structured.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Uh." Daniel has to think about that one. "I think so. Pretty sure I did, anyway, but I think that underwater prison place or wherever it was we were stood out. For, uh. Obvious reasons." The foremost of those being that Seth kind of died, for one. "There was a general water theme, really. I remember almost drowning in a few of them. Er. Kind of a lot."

A lot of the memories hover at the fringe of conscious thought, present but frustratingly out of reach in the way that memories of dreams tend to be. Certain faces stand out, even if he can't put names to them at the moment. And he'd been a little too panicked over Seth upon waking to put much thought to the other scattered recollections there.

[powerdealer]

Seth frowns sympathetically at the news that almost-drowning became sort of a theme for Daniel last night. Can't have been fun. Well, Seth knows very well that it wasn't fun at all, but to have to go through it over and over...

"Probably a group dream then," he answers, nodding. "From what we can tell, there are two kinds of shared dreams. There's the kind where one or two people get dumped into your head, or you end up in theirs. And stuff in that just comes from the minds of those few people involved," he explains, hands stuffed in his pockets.

"Then there are the big group ones, where.. I dunno, dozens, if not hundreds of people end up. Those often have a lot more solid settings and rules. And sometimes in those, the Rift brings in the minds of people who aren't even in this universe, from what we can tell." See, this is one of the perks of being friends with Seth. He's been here a long time, and keeps his ear to the ground when it comes to gossip and news and theories related to the Rift or the factions.

[peacefulexplorer]

Daniel's knee-jerk reaction to this news is that's incredible, his secondary reaction being so how does that work, exactly? He barely resists the urge to voice either viewpoint. Seth doesn't seem to mind talking about it, but the specifics of dreams are vaguely defined as it is even without spontaneous Rift involvement.

So instead he stays uncharacteristically silent as he mulls this new information over and absently hooks one hand over the back of his neck.

"Does it happen often?" he asks finally, faintly worried. He finds the entire concept unnerving, the first type of shared dream in particular. Daniel has enough trouble living in his own head and he doesn't exactly have room to rent.

[powerdealer]

"The small ones can happen anytime, but not too often. The big ones generally happen every two weeks, although it seems to have been more frequently recently," he answers. "Although that doesn't mean you're going to be in all of them," he adds quickly. There are a few of the big ones he's only heard about afterwards, and been very glad he missed. Then there are some he's a bit disappointed he wasn't a part of.

"Sorry I didn't tell ya, yeah?" he adds after a moment. "Don't always realise it's a dream myself. I promise though, some of them are actually quite nice." The one before had been good, even if everyone had been stuffed full of teenage hormones. Probably because it was mostly him and Johnny getting drunk.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Reassuring," Daniel says lightly. "It's fine, I'm just, uh, still adjusting to all this myself. That dream, it, um - well, for a minute there it felt like you'd actually, you know."

For someone who's done an awful lot of dying, he's having some trouble saying it, perhaps because he's less comfortable with someone taking the fall for him instead of the other way around. The fact that this time around it had been a "fall" in the literal sense doesn't help.

"I'm still sorry about that, by the way. Even if it didn't actually happen."

[powerdealer]

"It's not your fault the Rift likes to mess with us," he answers. He can't really blame Daniel for anything that happened in there, although the look on Daniel's face as Seth clung on for dear life has been replaying a few times in his head.

"Although that doesn't mean I won't still claim those dinners," he adds jokingly, to lighten the mood a little.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Ah, well, I wasn't lying about the cooking thing." Daniel rolls with it, grateful for the subject change. The fact that he'd recently been run through which a chunk of rebar at the time changes very little about the self-evaluation of his cooking. "But, you know, anytime you wanna take me up on it."

He says it cheerily enough to be construed as simple joking, but he wouldn't mind terribly if Seth ends up following through. He's been friendly and reasonable and has saved Daniel's life twice in a shared dream which, even if it wasn't strictly speaking real, is not the sort of thing Daniel typically forgets about.

[powerdealer]

"I'll keep it in mind," he answers with a smile, not entirely sure if he's joking or not anymore. Of course, having dinner with your mates isn't exactly unthinkable. And Daniel probably counts as a friend by now, even if this is only the third time they meet. Seth just seems to bond very quickly when he meets someone he likes.

"And hey, check this out," he says suddenly, cupping his empty hands together, shaking them a bit (mostly for effect), then shows Daniel his palm, now with a handful of paperclips in it.

[peacefulexplorer]

At this Daniel leans over to look, then grins.

"Oh, hey, look at that. And you're, you're not getting post-its all over the ceiling or, or, I don't know, stacks of pencils in weird places?"

[powerdealer]

"Well, I did a bit, at the start, when I was trying to figure it out," Seth answers, pocketing the paperclips. "Not anymore though. And, well, I think my power dealing makes it a lot easier for me to keep track of which powers are, uh... Active." Not that he can explain that further - just sort of goes on gut instinct, really. Like how he can know which powers to give away, and which to take, and how to create the effect without actually doing either.

[peacefulexplorer]

"That makes sense, if you have to handle multiple powers at once," he says, nodding, thankful to bury any remaining thoughts about floods and unstable underwater structures. "Does that mean you can imagine it and, and specify what you want at will? Like, you need a pencil and you can just - materialize it? There're limitations, obviously, but I mean, well, within those."

[powerdealer]

"Pretty much," he answers with a nod. "I've found bigger and more complex things to be harder. Paperclips are just a little bit of steel, so, pretty simple. I've made staples, but not a stapler. File folders, but no plastic binders." He shrugs. "Managed a pair of scissors though, that was good. I dunno where the limit goes. Maybe you could even make calculators with proper practice. Haven't been able to make anything you wouldn't find in an office, though."

[peacefulexplorer]

"The power to manifest office supplies." He considers this, head tipped to one side. "Can't say I see how I got a hold of that one, though I guess it could be useful. Theoretically."

He hates that he automatically files away the pair of scissors as a potential form of self-defense.

"Thanks for figuring it out, though." Daniel yanks his mind back to the present. "I was getting a little tired of the, uh, unwarranted surplus of paperclips."

[powerdealer]

"S'okay," he answers. "And, I dunno, sometimes the Rift gets really into your head, gives you something perfect for you. Sometimes it really screws you over. And sometimes you just get something random." He should probably just be thankful it wasn't worse. Some powers are more burdens than anything.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Yeah, I think I'm gonna put that one down under 'random'," Daniel says with a wry grin. "Not that I don't enjoy office supplies, I mean, who doesn't? I just don't know what legions upon legions of paperclips say about the whole 'scholarly peaceful explorer' vibe I'm trying to put out."

[powerdealer]

"I dunno, I wouldn't say paperclips were un-scholarly," he answers. "Though not very archaeology-specific. Or maybe they are, I don't know shit about archaeology," he adds, hunching his shoulders and turning a corner. They're nearly home now.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Well to be fair, according to most of my universe's archeological community, neither do I," he says, offhand. "Didn't have much of a professional career. And anyway, unless those paperclips happen to be ancient paperclips once used in a long-lost religious ceremony, I wouldn't think they'd be highly relevant."

[powerdealer]

Not much of a professional career - until he was an 'interstellar diplomat', of course. But maybe not traditional archaeology.

"Well, yeah, but there's always paperwork. Even I had some paperwork, if only to keep track of everything," he answers. Dealing doesn't really require an awful lot of paperwork, just a little private bookkeeping.

[peacefulexplorer]

"True," Daniel concedes with a shrug. "But even if most of my more recent paperwork usually involved explanations of why antagonizing the giant mosquitoes on some planet or other was a bad idea, well, still didn't make it my favorite pastime." He's chosen the levity route and he's sticking with it. After the panic and assorted pain of the night before, he thinks they could use it.

[powerdealer]

"Giant mosquitoes, huh?" Seth asks, looking up with a smile. He's seen a lot of weird things, both here and in his home universe, but not that. "Glad I've never met any of those. Regular sized ones are bad enough." It's true, though - paperwork is always going to be more boring than the thing you're doing paperwork about.