Daniel Jackson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
peacefulexplorer) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bigapplesauce2014-11-19 07:00 pm
peacefulexplorer) wrote in bigapplesauce2014-11-19 07:00 pm
Entry tags:
It's been the worst day since yesterday [closed]
The knotted mass of guilt in Daniel's chest hasn't gone away by the time he's on his way to Seth's apartment building, again, hands clenching and unclenching and wandering and ducking into his pockets and back out again a minute later.
Daniel feels like an idiot.
He feels like an idiot, because what good could an ordinary library in Manhattan possibly be for this kind of thing? Yesterday had passed in sporadic bursts of anxiety, horror over what the hell might be happening, creeping dread that this might not be reversible and then finally today Daniel's traitorous phone had buzzed to deliver several texts in rapid succession. Texts he should have received a full day ago. Short bursts of words and questions that should read as neutral and impersonal like any other text but don't because Seth had clearly, clearly not been in a good place by the time he'd faded from Daniel's range of vision and he must not have heard or processed any of the prior warnings because the texts all make it bleakly obvious he'd had no idea what was happening. Seth must have assumed the worse.
That would not be atypical for Seth to have assumed the worse.
The idea that Daniel had most assuredly been the cause of that makes him faintly, mildly nauseous.
He has to halt outside the building for a tight minute, his lungs a paradoxical mess of relief and jittering apprehension and no small amount of the always-persistent guilt until at last he makes an unerring line for the figure in front. The visible figure. Daniel's eyes don't slide right past and he doesn't need to constantly refocus and the gradually mounting panic tentatively starts to give way.
Daniel feels like an idiot.
He feels like an idiot, because what good could an ordinary library in Manhattan possibly be for this kind of thing? Yesterday had passed in sporadic bursts of anxiety, horror over what the hell might be happening, creeping dread that this might not be reversible and then finally today Daniel's traitorous phone had buzzed to deliver several texts in rapid succession. Texts he should have received a full day ago. Short bursts of words and questions that should read as neutral and impersonal like any other text but don't because Seth had clearly, clearly not been in a good place by the time he'd faded from Daniel's range of vision and he must not have heard or processed any of the prior warnings because the texts all make it bleakly obvious he'd had no idea what was happening. Seth must have assumed the worse.
That would not be atypical for Seth to have assumed the worse.
The idea that Daniel had most assuredly been the cause of that makes him faintly, mildly nauseous.
He has to halt outside the building for a tight minute, his lungs a paradoxical mess of relief and jittering apprehension and no small amount of the always-persistent guilt until at last he makes an unerring line for the figure in front. The visible figure. Daniel's eyes don't slide right past and he doesn't need to constantly refocus and the gradually mounting panic tentatively starts to give way.
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And it's over now and they've cleared up their misunderstandings, so Daniel tells himself he can start shoving all those low points in his life back into their mental lockbox of well-adjusted intuition.
Daniel's now becoming much more aware of how Seth is soaking wet and has probably been soaking wet for quite a while. A - sort of an unconscious role reversal from the dream that Daniel immediately shuffles into its own neural vault because he does not need that in his life right now, it is extremely distracting and also contributing to some conflicting personal feelings that he doesn't know how to address without being exceptionally awkward.
"You, you should probably, uh." He indicates Seth's drenched wardrobe with a vague hand gesture that lacks its usual startling high energy. "You know."
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"And you look like you either need caffeine, or a long nap," he adds, and the smile comes a little more easily now. "Come on." He moves his hand from Daniel's arm to the back of his shoulder to lead him into the building and up the stairs. He only lets go to pull out his keys and open the door for them.
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At this point Daniel realizes he's just taking his brain through pointless mental loops, exercises in guilt and questions as to what he could have done better, all of which he's already worried enough about at length.
"Were you still able to get in and out when you were, you know?" he asks once they're inside, partly out of curiosity and partly for the sake of conversation and partly because he's having trouble moving the discussion elsewhere.
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Seth thankfully isn't really dripping anymore, so he peels off his wet jacket and his shoes, leaving them in the bathroom. Both his jeans and his thin white shirt are clinging uncomfortably to him, so it'll be nice to change into something dry, and he heads over to his dresser to find something, glancing at the tank for his new lodger. Unsurprisingly, she seems to be hiding in her little house, probably still a bit wary after being kidnapped yesterday.
"Well, coffee's there, the bed's here. Pick one and make yourself at home," he says, picking through shirts. "I wouldn't mind you napping, really, you look done in." Now that the crisis is over and Seth's anxiety seems to have settled, he doesn't desperately need conversation or anything, it's just nice to have some company, and he doubts Daniel could actually provide the best conversation at the moment. Seth would rather he took a nap and stayed longer as a result of it.
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He drops his hands, blinking rapidly to clear away the faint shadowed colors that followed the pressure of palms against eyelids, then squints at the darker line that's clearly visible through the soaked white fabric of Seth's shirt.
The darker line of - numbers?
No.
That had been the dream. Hadn't it been the dream? It had been the dream. The dream.
"Seth?" Daniel asks, the word high and strange and edged with panic. "Um - is that - on your back, is that, um, a tattoo?"
A chill settles between the vertebrae of his neck. It had been the dream. Hadn't it? It had been the dream. The dream that - had nothing to do with reality, because that wouldn't make sense because it had been a dream.
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Yeah, let's talk about his stay at the rebel base, that's just what his nerves need right now. He had remarkably, finally started to relax again. Maybe sometime he wouldn't mind discussing it with Daniel, but they are both too tired and too emotionally drained right now to actually have any kind of productive conversation, and Daniel really should know that. Seth doesn't know why Daniel brought it up, unless he had figured the tattoo was something the dream just made up.
"You've seen it before, haven't you?" he asks, his voice tense and restrained, and he snaps the drawer of the dresser shut a bit more roughly than necessary.
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The rationality dies before its conclusion.
Daniel wishes he were someone who could shrug things away. He wishes he were someone who had the ability to wait for the issue to emerge naturally instead of confronting it, brazen and exposed, dragging it out and addressing with a directness he knows people find unsettling.
But he is so obviously not that sort of person, not the way he stands now with his shoulders a controlled rigidity and his jaw an aching, tightened rivet.
"Seth," he says, hating that he's already starting to know the answer, hating that he has to ask, "how much of that dream was real?"
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Seth thought that when Daniel had gotten upset about the things in the clipboard, he had been upset about.. everything that had happened. Finding out all those things had been real, that Seth really had been locked up for so long, he'd thought that was the issue at hand. Not just.. some tidbits about his childhood, or about his mental state or something. Granted, his deeply messed up mental state...
He desperately doesn't want to be having this conversation right now, but he feels like he owes Daniel an answer, especially since at this point he's likely to reach the same conclusions even without Seth, unless Seth very specifically denies it was real. And the only reason he can see for doing that is to spare Daniel the worry, but he does deserve to know, doesn't he? It's not like Seth's really been keeping it a big secret anyway. He just... is not inclined to talk about it.
For several moments he just stands still, not doing or something anything. Just gripping very tightly onto the shirt in his hand.
"All of it," he answers finally, his voice tight, and then he quickly pulls off his wet shirt, back still towards Daniel, clearly revealing the tattoo for the moment, before he pulls on the dry shirt, not caring that it will no longer be completely dry after he puts it on. Good enough.
"'cept for the bits with you in them," he adds, though he probably doesn't need to. "Broke out almost five months ago. On me own." Except for Gabe's help, but that had not so much been the breaking out as it had been the place to flee to, a place to hide, to make the rebels lose their trail.
He doesn't want to turn around and see how Daniel's taking this.
tw: suicide mention, self-loathing, discussion of trauma, mild panic THIS TAG IS HEAVY
Daniel can see a design. It's stitching itself together from all the parts of Seth he's been granted understanding of, and they're all curled into one place to form a construct he doesn't want to look at.
Seth isn't fond of touch. Of course he isn't, of course he wouldn't be after all that. Of course he isn't.
Seth mentioned not being on the best of terms with the rebels. That had been the profound understatement of the year.
Seth was suicidal at the darkest points of his life because he'd been trapped and subdued and sealed in a tiny room where he'd had no agency, forced to carry out an agenda he didn't agree with and it must have felt like the only way out.
Seth learned how to use the powers he held. Not out of casual experimentation, not from curiosity, but because he was desperate. He needed a way out.
None of it is something Daniel wants to imagine Seth actually undergoing here, in the real world. Seeing it in a dreamscape had been bad enough but he'd assumed the setting had been some representation of Seth's subconscious at the time, something damaged and torn and scared and angry and obstinate.
Seeing the tattoo is worse. Seeing it makes it real. It's real. All of it.
Daniel pulls off his glasses, rubs at his eyes, his hands tremoring because he is afraid, he is stricken, he is furious, he is lost, and he doesn't know how to fix this. He - fuck, he never knows how to fix anything, just eases the gaps between suffering and conscious thought with whatever words he can give.
Look at how good at fixing everyone's problems Daniel is. Witness the scintillating interpersonal aptitude. He couldn't even make Seth visible again, he couldn't even make him understand what was happening before he faded. And now Daniel's here, in a place he's clearly not wanted or needed, making things worse. Daniel Jackson, who's razed civilizations and destroyed planets but is always forgiven too easily because he always had the best intentions in mind, doing the one thing he's good at - unburying the traumas best left buried and digging his invasive questions into the raw psychological nerves to see if they still bleed.
His head is light, his lungs are dyspneic, his hands are still shaking, his legs are shaking, there's something faintly vertiginous about the way he's standing, he's paresthesiac, he has not slept in something like twenty-four hours, so Daniel navigates his way to the couch and sits, breathing, trying to breathe, trying to think of something adequate to say in response to that. At this point I'm sorry just seems laughable.
"I'm sorry," he says anyway, because what else is there?
everything is terrible
Not great, it looks like.
He's very obviously distressed by this news, very clearly physically shaken. Seth wants to walk over and give him another hug, reassure him that it's okay, Seth's fine now. That version of him in the dream may have been him once, but he's not like that anymore.
Except that's a lie, isn't it?
Seth is functioning, he is coping, he is managing, but he is not entirely sure he's recovering. A week hasn't gone by without a nightmare that didn't hold at least some of the elements of his stay there, or some other past traumatic experience. And sure, it's been five months, and he's a lot more stable and secure than he was when he broke out, but that's not really saying much. There's no denying that he hasn't been profoundly changed by his imprisonment, if not that much in personality or values, then certainly in how he deals with things, how he can't deal with some things anymore because it brings it all back.
One of the things he can't deal with, at least just now, is going over there and comforting Daniel, listening to Daniel talk about how horrible it all must have been, while Seth tries to downplay his experiences. Neither does he want to pity parade. He just wants things to be better. And he does realise that to achieve that any time soon, he's probably going to have to actually work through it more than he has so far, but he's not sure how much he can take of Daniel's initial reaction.
So he just nods curtly at Daniel's apology, at his sympathy.
"I'm getting changed," he says, grabbing the jeans and underwear he's pulled out, and heads to the bathroom to do so. He doesn't close the door, not entirely, because he's not really trying to shut Daniel out and he doesn't want him to think so. He just needs a little space, and Daniel needs a little time.
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The mental visuals are unnervingly stark - the hard shadows scored under Seth's eyes and the subtle darkened spots of bruising had stood out so sharply beneath the irradiating glare of fluorescent lights. It's far, far too easy to recall how tired Seth had been, tired of what he'd been made to do, tired of scraping out the hollow defiance to glare at his captors, tired of existing between sharp corners and gray walls and mirrors from which his jailers stared, unseen.
For months.
With altogether too much effort, he drags his hands away from his face to stare at the door through which Seth vanished without seeing it.
He's intruding.
He's resurrecting memories Seth doesn't need. In a matter of a few words he managed to breach a deeply personal space so he could lay bare all of the skeletons in Seth's proverbial closet, seize them and spread them out so he could inspect them all at once with no regard for who they belonged to. Because he's Daniel and he always knows what's best, doesn't he, he's the pinnacle of moral fucking autocracy, righteously self-righteous and bristling with that surefooted arrogance that borders on hubristic.
In a snap of precise economical motion Daniel rises and makes for the door out and gets one hand on the knob before he catches himself in his own indecision. His forehead drops against the door, both hands wrap around the knob because they need something to cling to, clearly.
He's intruding. He's making a mess. A completely unnecessary mess.
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Just breathes for a second. Gathering as much calm as he can.
Then he straightens and steels himself for going back in there, giving Daniel his coffee and then probably dealing with his thoughtful questions and intense sympathy. He wants Daniel to know all this shit about him, he wants Daniel to understand him, it just takes a lot of effort to get through it.
He pulls the bathroom door open again, and sees Daniel standing there with his hand on the door handle.
There is a very intense surge of emotion going through him at that sight. The fear that Daniel would simply have had enough, that it's too much for him to try to cope with, that he considers Seth far more trouble than he's worth, just now seeing how fucked up he is... It becomes instantly, painfully real for him.
He swallows thickly.
It makes sense, of course, and he'd been expecting it, but somehow that doesn't mean it doesn't still come as a surprise. A painful, gut-wrenching, sickening, chest-clenching disappointment, betrayal even. He's having to try really hard not to overreact, to not assume the worst, and assuming the worst is something he is oh so good at by now.
"Thought you weren't just going to leave," he says, breaking at the last syllable as he recalls the last time they discussed this. It's impossible to keep the accusation out of his voice.
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"That's not -" Daniel pulls his forehead away from the door, gathers himself, releases the thing, turns around, faces Seth directly. He knows this is how Seth operates, how if left to make his own conclusions the man will slide into his tendency for self-blame, assume he is the root of the problem and fold ever deeper into himself.
Daniel shakes his head, expression locked.
"No, I'm making it worse." The words are muttered, almost an undertone. He needs to make it clear to Seth that this is a resolution Daniel reached independently, that the potential decision to leave for the time being was entirely (selfishly) oriented around how he could help - and in light of the day's earlier misunderstanding, this had been such a poor choice in reasoning. The justifications boil out in turbid, disordered bursts of rapid self-judgment. "I'm - these are things that, that should be your choice to discuss, not mine, not - and not out of some, some single-minded selfish altruism to fix things that aren't fixable, not by their nature and not by my choice because that - isn't my choice and I shouldn't have assumed it was."
He stops to breathe because - because breathing is important, and Daniel seems to have forgotten that in the midst of his scalding, frustrated self-assessment. One hand creeps back to the door, but only for support's sake. The effort of explicating that diatribe has compounded itself with the weight of prolonged wakefulness, and the faint lightness in his head has returned.
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It doesn't sound like he's leaving because he can't be bothered to deal with it all, but because he really believes leaving is the best thing for both of them.
He can't blame Daniel for wanting to fix things. Because despite what he might think of himself, every time something heavy like this has come up, Daniel may have asked some intrusive questions, but then he has rectified himself, he's asserted that it is Seth's choice whether or not to talk about it, and... Seth somehow knows, or at least he believes, that whatever he might ask, especially if he's insistent enough, Daniel would do it.
The intense self-criticism definitely feels familiar to Seth, except it's ridiculous, because Daniel's got a fuck lot less to criticise himself for than Seth does.
"You're not making it worse, you twat," he says, stepping into the kitchen. He really needs to call Daniel names right now, because he is acting like a moron. Even if it's self-directed twattiness. And he probably is scared to deal with all of Seth's mess, because who wouldn't be, but if Daniel wants to leave, then he's damn well going to do it for the right and honest reasons, not because he fools himself into thinking it's the right thing to do.
"It's always been this bad. And if I don't want to talk about it, then I don't talk about it," he continues, pulling out two mugs and setting them on the kitchen top, pouring coffee into both of them. It's not fresh, it's the pot he made earlier this morning, but it's strong and it's hot, which is the important part. Then he carries them both over to the living room table, and sets Daniel's cup pointedly down on it.
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"I'm sorry," he sighs again, reigning himself back from another automatic backwards skid into overthinking the issue. "It's a pattern. You know. I poke things that shouldn't be touched, they break, and you'd think I'd've learned by now but - planets, civilizations, one after another, and good intentions don't mean anything if I can't fix what I've ruined." Because he was curious. Because he was fascinated. Because he wanted to help.
The coffee is a godsend. The fatigued, hazy patina over his mind cracks with each grateful sip, the headache from too many hours awake gradually easing out for the time being.
Daniel shoots Seth an ironic attempt at a smile, a bitter tightening of the corners of his mouth.
"Statistically, I'm due to screw something or someone else up again very soon, so. Careful."
He quickly returns to his coffee because he can't tell if he meant that as a joke.
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"If they broke that easily, they probably would've done regardless of whether you were there," he points heavily. But he can't imagine that kind of responsibility is easy to carry. It's exactly why Seth stopped dealing powers. He doesn't want that kind of responsibility, because so much could change, and following the money definitely wasn't the way to find the right hands for a power. And then he had done it again when he came here, and look what that led to.
"And if it helps, there's not much left of me not screwed up already," he adds. Because apparently stating painful truths as jokes is something they're doing now.
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Following that much more coherent discourse, Daniel draws the mug closer to himself and wraps both hands around it in a wordless protective movement, one thumb worrying at its rim absentmindedly.
"Considering everything you've been through - allowing yourself to simply continue is one of the most difficult choices someone can make." This smile does succeed even if it gets lost in the pressure of the next few words, under the nudging reminders of what, exactly, it is that Seth has been through. "The fact that you're still here and, and chose to work past that regardless is incredibly admirable."
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Seth doesn't feel it. Perhaps Daniel believes it, he certainly sounds like he does, but Seth has trouble seeing anything particularly admirable in it. He did it because he had no other option. How could it have been a difficult choice to make if it was the only one he could make?
Still, he doesn't argue against it. Even if it doesn't ring true, it's touching to hear that Daniel thinks so much of him, that he sees worth where Seth doesn't.
"I thought you knew," he replies instead, rather than even try to address what Daniel said. "I thought, a week ago, when we talked about it..." He trails off, not sure exactly how to finish.
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Dreams here aren't typical, however, and Daniel really should have picked up on that. And it makes the role he'd had to play in that one all the more disconcerting. Had that been Seth's subconscious, casting him in a role he felt fit best? The thought leaves an immediate chill. He figured Seth had picked up on his distaste for the part he'd been given to play, how he'd hated every second of it.
"I wish I'd gotten you out sooner - in there," he mutters, completely pointlessly. "Even if it was a dream, you - shouldn't have had to relive as much as you did."
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He gets that Daniel wants to help, but sometimes you just can't. At least not directly. Just having Daniel as a friend has already made Seth's life a lot better. That simply has to be enough.
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"You know, um." The frown flickers as he contemplates his coffee. "Dreams and, and memories are something I have some, uh, experience in navigating. After Ascending it was just something I - had to get better at. So if you, you know."
It's a belated offer, and it's regarding an extremely inexact science that Daniel has so little of a grasp over. The dreams here are nothing like any of the subconscious memories of his Ascension, and he has no idea if any amount of meditation would have an effect on control of the dream environment.
"I don't know how much it'd help. Or if it'd help at all, really." A vague disclaimer for an equally vague offer, punctuated by a tiny shrug.
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"But I do appreciate your help," he adds after a moment, because it bears saying. He hopes it's implied, that he values their friendship, and how Daniel tries looking out for him. But seeing as Daniel just thought the best idea would be to simply stop sticking his nose in, it's probably worth letting him know.
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He realigns himself, eyes training on Seth with their fervently sympathetic, blazingly curious look.
"You're not obligated to talk about anything," Daniel says evenly, the caffeine having smoothed away his nervous energy. "It's not a question of owing explanations. But if discussing it would help you process it, well - you probably know the option is always, yeah."
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"I know," he answers with a smile, small but genuine this time. And if there's anyone he thinks he could actually talk about it at length with, it's definitely Daniel. Gabe has always been there for him, and him and Johnny are definitely supportive, but they're generally not the kind of people Seth feels comfortable laying his heart open to. Not that Seth ever feels too comfortable doing that. But Daniel's intense understanding and sympathy helps.
"I'm just...," he starts, frowning a little at his coffee, mostly thoughtful. "Not sure what to say, you know? I don't, generally, talk about myself that much." He takes another sip, considering. His reticence usually serves him decently, but not when he actually wants Daniel to know stuff about him. "How about this. Ask me a question. Not just about my time there, but anything. If I don't want to talk about it, I'll let you know."
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He takes a prolonged drink of his coffee as he considers the offer, debates the intricacies, bats around a possible conclusion.
"All right," he says, rubbing at his chin with the back of one hand, "I say we spring for equal exchange here. I think if you're going to allow me interrogative freedom it's only fair that I give you the same." Daniel knows he's dodged too many questions as of late, choosing instead to define himself by his proclivity for consolation and the reach toward others. "The questions can go both ways. Sound fair?"
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