bigapplesauce | [closed] After painting the ceiling red

Current Location: Hell's kitchen
Current Music: August 5th, noon

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[closed] After painting the ceiling red

[Warning: Lots of focus on suicide, with a side of drug and alcohol use, plenty of traumatic subjects.]

Seth should start keeping a tally of number of times Daniel gets to watch him die in a dream. Only two so far, but that's in less than three weeks of knowing him, so who knows what it will be over time? He's long since given up on keeping track of when he dies in a dream in general, since that's not a terribly unusual occurrence, but it's rarer for it to happen in shared ones.

He had given up on sleep more or less immediately after waking up. The fear he had felt, the hopelessness, it was all a bit too real, too familiar, and easily stuck with him. So he had gone out to cope with it in the only way he felt capable of - getting blissfully high.

A few hours later, once morning had properly arrived, and the buzz was wearing off, he returned home. Not ready to deal with being sober however, he had replaced the morphine with alcohol, namely whiskey. The rest of the morning had passed in only somewhat comforting intoxication and anxiety, and then Daniel had texted him, and Seth didn't feel able to answer. It took two hours before he could actually face the idea of seeing him after that ordeal. Not just because of the things he had seen Daniel do, but the things Daniel had seen him do. There's no small amount of shame and self-loathing involved.

But at last he had answered, and now he's waiting for Daniel to get there, anxiously picking at his sleeves and staring at the wall. He's not as drunk as he would like, but he's definitely not sober. It's not going to be a fun conversation.

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They've really got to stop meeting like this.

It's not fair on either of their subconsciouses.

Daniel knocks on the door of Seth's apartment, again, and stands outside waiting, again.

He'd known Seth had a problem with the military mindset. For god's sake, he'd known that. And Seth knew that Daniel did work for a military branch in his old universe, and Daniel figured he'd known what had probably entailed, and that would be that. Unfortunately, it seemed the Rift had been rather intent on dragging Seth through one of Daniel's more despicable memories of his old job, then warping it in the worst way possible.

It was all for scientific exploration and discovery, right?

God. Daniel rubs at his eyes beneath his glasses. He hadn't slept after that either. What a mess.

Seth looks up at the knock, and takes a deep, slightly shuddering breath before he gets to his feet.

He looks like a mess, like he just threw on some clothes after waking up, which would be because that is exactly what he did. The clothes he'd worn in the dream have been left half on the bed, half on the floor next to it. Apart from the sweat he'd awoken in though, they're clean and undamaged, unlike in the dream. He's a little tempted to burn them, to be honest. He'll probably up tossing them out.

He runs a hand tiredly through his hair and opens the door. Daniel looks only a little better than Seth, though he too is a preferable sight to their earlier dream selves. No injuries, and no military clothing.

Seth greets him with a noise somewhere between a grunt and a "Hey."

He leaves the door open and heads back towards the couch, where a glass and a bottle of whiskey sits on the table, though he ends up seating himself in the armchair. He hasn't yet decided if physical proximity is something he's willing to deal with just now.

"Hi," answers Daniel with a faint frown. The word stretches into something distant and uncomfortable and hovers like a thick raincloud, unaddressed.

He enters cautiously, the easy familiarity between the two now somewhat reduced. It makes sense considering what they've both experienced, but Daniel will still mourn its loss.

A few flicks of his eyes takes in the rumpled clothes, Seth's appearance, the alcohol, and Daniel can draw his own regretful conclusions.

"Are you drunk?" He doesn't mean for it to sound quite so astonished or reproachful. But god Seth, it's barely noon.

"A bi', yeah," he admits. After that particular experience, being drunk is not something he feels shame over. Well, not a lot, anyhow. It's not like he makes a habit of it. He may be an addict, but he is not an alcoholic. He wonders if it's that noticeable, or if it's mostly the presence of the open alcohol that did it.

He makes a short but sweeping gesture for Daniel to come take a seat, not to stand there hovering. "Lemme know if you wanna be as well." Seth definitely wouldn't blame him.

Daniel takes off his glasses to rub at the area just beneath his eye a little too vigorously.

"Mmm, no," he says, inflecting the word with a high, lighthearted pitch. "No, I think I'm good, actually. Seth, look, just - maybe we shouldn't have this conversation while you're, you know. Inebriated."

"Riight, okay," Seth answers, drawing it out sarcastically. "Wha' d'you wanna do instead? Bingo?" he suggests.

He realises he's being a little unfair, but he feels like he's earned the right to be. Which is not to say that Daniel has actually done anything wrong, not intentionally. But most of the currently wrong and painful things are pretty directly related to him, so it's a bit difficult to seperate it.

"Not sure I'm capable of havin' this conversation while sober, so," he adds, shaking his head a little.

He's not that drunk, really, this is mostly just bitterness manifesting. The heavy side of tipsy, maybe. Seth is English and a Northerner, he's got a pretty strong ability to remain sensible after drinking, even drinking a lot. And he hasn't been drinking a lot, he's just been drinking for a while. There's a difference.

Okay. That stings a little. Seth is - clearly not in a good place. Noted.

He doesn't quite mask his flinch at the slight jibe but he tries to pass it off as the rolling of one shoulder and hopes Seth is too tipsy to notice. He doesn't sit, just moves to the space opposite Seth and stands, hands loosely in pockets, head slightly cocked.

"How did you want to start?" he asks, quietly patient.

Seth does notice the flinch, being as focused on Daniel as he is, and immediately feels guilty. He doesn't really want to punish Daniel for what happened, what was completely out of his control. Part of him might be wanting to punish Daniel for killing those people, but that's not fair either. It's not his place, it won't do any good, and it probably isn't really deserved. It's just... difficult to be confronted with, when he was perfectly content to leave it to his imagination, or just not really consider it much at all preferably.

"I dunno, you were the one who suggested talkin'," he answers, though sounding a fair bit milder now, intentionally so. He can't hide how weary he feels though.

Daniel breathes out, long and slow, in what is less of a sigh and more of a statement of multifaceted exhaustion.

"Bottom line," he says finally, each word unstressed and even, his gaze unwavering, "I don't really know where to start with this one. I know it's, all of it, it's complicated."

Except it isn't, really, and that's the prime issue. Seth had gotten to see up close the shades of black and white that occasionally existed in Daniel's world, and then he'd been the victim of them. If there was any way to ease someone into the kind of work Daniel did, the Rift chose the poorest possible way to go about doing it.

Seth nods quietly, fiddling with his hands. The situation perhaps hadn't been that complicated, but his feelings surrounding it certainly are. In more ways than Daniel knows.

Unwilling to discuss what had happened, what Daniel had done, what Seth had finally done... Whether there were others who had more or less been in Seth's position and ended up the way he had feared...

Seth instead grasps for one subject that might not be all bad. "They friends of yours? Um, Reynolds and O'Neill?" Probably discussing Daniel's friends and/or co-workers will probably make Daniel feel homesick, but surely not any more than the dream's already done.

Hearing it elicits a familiar, sickening pang of frustrated distance. Sensing this conversation might go smoother at even eye level, Daniel moves over to drop onto the couch, one thumb rubbing at the other hand's palm.

"Reynolds often ran support for us," he answers with a tiny, clipped nod. "If, if we needed it. And Jack, um. Well. Jack's the closest thing I've had to a best friend."

Family, actually, if one decided to go against the traditional definition of the term. It had always been family, because Daniel was the one who no longer had any left to speak of. The others had their roots and their outside bonds, but Daniel only ever had the three most important people in his life. Had. He remembers his tenses this time.

It wrenches a little to say it, to have remembered it, even in the form of a dream manifestation. He can't help but wonder dully if the rest of the SGC has given up trying to find him by now, whether he's been tentatively declared MIA because they've long since stopped trying to declare him dead, and he wonders how long it will be before Jack's absolute conviction that he'll come walking back from this one dies out as well.

He misses him. He misses all of them, and it would be nice to be able to send some sort of signal that he's not dead, but Daniel doesn't think they believe he's dead anyway. Or maybe they do and are just impatiently waiting for it to be reversed, because when isn't it?

What little animosity he felt against Daniel after that dream seems to more or less melt away at not just this news, but the way he delivers it. O'Neill - Jack - was probably more grateful than he let on about having Daniel back in sort of one piece. He wonders how accurate a depiction it was of him, since it was really Daniel's idea of him rather than the actual man. Even from Seth's brief interaction with him, he'd seemed pretty decent. Perhaps because apart from Daniel, he was the most un-military person Seth interacted with in there, in that he actually seemed to have a personality.

Seth nods gloomily in acknowledgement, but he doesn't manage to say anything. He doesn't have the capacity to find something supportive or comforting to say. Everything kind of sucks. He resists leaning forward to pick up his drink again. Not just yet. Though there's always the hope he can get Daniel to drink some too, because he seems like he needs it, even if it's only noon.

The silence is unbearable; it leaves Daniel alone with his own toxic thought process, running and re-running through endless mental scenarios, anything to forestall the guilt and the crushing image of seeing the SGC ceiling spattered with Seth's cranial tissue.

The loop of the dream running in his mind's eye hits that point again. Daniel closes his eyes, twitching involuntarily when the nonexistent shot goes off so he doesn't have to see the body arcing backwards against the wall. He sees it anyway, naturally, because of course he does.

He opens his eyes again.

The silence persists. It's becoming unsustainable.

"I don't know what to tell you," he says finally, grinding out the internalized mess of frustration that's still winding its way through the mental replay that's just kicked off again. "You knew I worked with my universe's military. And you knew what that could entail."

Edited 2014-12-08 23:55 (UTC)

Seth shakes his head a little. "That's not... You don' need an explanation for that," he answers, running his hands over his face for a moment. He sighs, dropping his hands dejectedly.

"Look, I know you well enough to assume you did what, what you had to, and that you wouldn't, um... Stoop to what it is I hate about the military, or police, or whatever," he continues, finding himself staring at the table again. He's not sure he can word this properly, but that's more to do with the emotions wrapped up in it rather than the alcohol.

It did take him several hours to actually reach the point where he was sure he believed that. Of course, it doesn't stop the images of brutality, however necessary, from popping into his head far too often. It's going to take a little longer to replace the mental images of that with something less traumatising.

"Seth, you've known me three weeks." Daniel looks at the hands that don't know what they should be doing with themselves. "I worked there for eight years."

He doesn't want Seth to think him capable of the things he did, but it would be a lie to imply he isn't. He's done them. He's done worse. Allowing Seth to operate under the assumption that things are any different isn't acceptable.

"And what you saw might have been a, a twisted account, it might have deviated from actuality to a certain extent but the point is that it happened. Tegalus, the rebels, all of it - that was real for me. Different, maybe, but that doesn't change it. It happened."

Seth's frown deepens, and he rubs absently at his arm. He doesn't know how to explain it. It does change how he sees Daniel, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not something he can cope with and get over. And he doesn't want Daniel to think that Seth is casting moral judgement over him, when as far as he can tell, it was done for good reason. At least that's what he wants to believe. That's what he finds it easiest to believe. He doesn't want Daniel to think that Seth is better than him.

"You know, if I'd done wha' you asked me too, it wouldn' be the first time I'd killed someone," he says, swallowing and staring intensely at the table. "Hell, Kelly probably offed a dozen people at least. So if you think I'm in any position to judge..." He trails off, leaving that hanging there.

The twist of guilt is marred by the faint thrill of alarm. From the way Seth had reacted, Daniel wouldn't imagine he'd had to fire on someone before. But there'd been a lot of additional factors, he recalls - the shock, the confusion, the hail of explosions, the fact that Daniel had regressed to some past version of himself.

Some past version himself who was no less of a hypocrite, no less of a man he doesn't want to look at, than the person he is now.

"It's not judgement, it's -" He loses the thread he hadn't meant to pick up and his hands still as he inhales deeply, breathes out to regain some sensation of control. It doesn't work, but the illusion is nice for the two seconds it holds. "I don't know. It's - difficult to realize. That not having to do that at, at some point in your life - it's a luxury."

Daniel reacts less than Seth would've expected him to. But after that particular experience, they're probably both pretty drained.

"It's how Shannon died," he says, not sure why he's continuing to share. Evening the scores? Confession? Perhaps now Daniel is no longer as innocent as he seemed, Seth feels safer in letting him know about all his fucked-up baggage. Might as well get it out of the way, right? Make sure he knows what he's getting into.

Well. That might be the wrong way to put it. It's not like they're really getting into anything.

He looks up, expression crumpling somewhere between inquisition and sympathy.

He doesn't want to think about those implications.

But they're four-worded and blinding, and he can't not stare back at them in their ambiguity and compacted horror.

"How do you mean?" he asks slowly then, eyes flicking to the bottle and back again, he shakes his head. "Seth, you're not exactly - I mean, you're pretty, uh - I just think you might regret bringing this up now rather than, you know, later."

"Hmm," Seth answers with a smile, bitter and humourless. It's going to be painful either way. Drunken confessions are marginally easier. Maybe it's just because it's been a long time since he's felt as hopeless as he did this morning. It makes the difficult memories harder to ignore. Perhaps if he shares them, at least Daniel will have some insight. Not that he doesn't already have about a truck-load of insight.

"Well, it's a little complicated," he says, ignoring the warnings and focusing on the question. "But, um, drugs overdose. She ODed on gear I gave her. After which, well, I was a mess..." he begins explaining, reaching up to rub at his face again.

"Oh, god."

Thoughtlessly, he leans forward to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder before the dream and all its associations come splitting back to the forefront. He wavers, uncertain, then slowly lifts the hand to hook around the back of his neck.

"God, I'm sorry," he murmurs. "That can't have - god."

And he can see it, too, Daniel can envision in crisp, well-defined lines the kind of backwards decline Seth's entire everything must have taken after that, reduced to a victim of loss, left to crumble in the toxicity of his own frustration and guilt and self-blame.

"I'm so sorry," he says again, uselessly. The words sound hackneyed in comparison to the grief they're somehow meant to penetrate.

Seth nods a little, acknowledging the sympathy. Somehow it's easier to talk about this than the dream. At least it's something he's gotten a little distance from. Something he's actually had the time and support to work through and recover from, more or less.

"Well, um," he continues awkwardly. He hasn't gotten to the killing yet - not really. Sure, he'd blamed himself for her death, and he's still not convinced he wasn't at fault. But that time it hadn't been intentionally.

"Took me.. a very long time, but eventually I found someone with the power to bring people back from the dead. So. I brought her back."

He leans forward and picks up his half-full glass of whiskey, draining it as he lets that minor bombshell settle.

Oh.

Daniel takes off his glasses to scrub a hand over his eyes, shoulders hunching. Stories that embark from the point of resurrection so rarely end well unless they originate from the New Testament. This story already has a deeply, viscerally unfortunate ending, and he doesn't need to watch Seth chasing that reveal with whiskey to know it.

He waits, eyebrows drawn down in sympathy, for Seth to reach a point of relative stillness.

"What happened?" he asks quietly.

"Turns out, when you bring people back, they turn into zombies," he answers, in a light voice that does nothing to mask the guilt and grief behind it. He turns the glass over in his hands, staring down at it.

"Long story short, nine people ended up dead because of me, several of which I had to kill myself. And two pets, including my iguana," he continues evenly, morose but calm. He's mostly including the detail about the animals to get across the point of what a completely surreal situation it was. Ridiculous, and would've been funny if it weren't also so tragic. "And, well, let's not forget I single-handedly almost caused the zombie apocalypse."

He sighs heavily, looking up at the ceiling, pausing for a moment. "Got Shannon with a shovel." He reaches up to touch his cheekbone, indicating where he'd hit her, then falls silent.

He tenses, glances sharply sideways and back again. What was undoubtedly a tragic, emotionally draining experience also must have been a singularly horrifying one and, true to his nature, Seth's decided the entire thing must have been his fault. And he's really the last person who needs this kind of guilt weighing on his conscience.

For a moment Daniel wrestles with the correct response to something like that before realizing that there really isn't one. He either wishes Seth were sober or that he were more drunk; he can't decide which.

"That's not your fault," he says evenly. "You couldn't have known. Accidentally catalyzing a situation doesn't make you responsible for it."

He needs to make him understand it. Seth's lived with enough self-blame.

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