bigapplesauce | don't get lost in heaven, they got locks on the gate [open to multiple]

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don't get lost in heaven, they got locks on the gate [open to multiple]

Existence without form or breath or shape is disorienting, the spread of atoms over a plane he doesn't recognize, with the repeated dissolutions and reshapings of an indistinct self. At one point there was pain, and the unspooling of himself into light and purpose, and for a long while there is only amorphous drifting. He hits barriers, dissonant and frequent, where once he should have crossed from one plane to another, one reality to the next, in an effortless slide of energy across the universal boundaries. It is difficult to define emotional state outside of the human context - he only knows that he is not human - but it is a state of affairs that generates confused distress.

Temporal sequencing becomes a problem.

Awareness, too, is difficult to achieve. Gradually he is able to pull together the various components that comprise himself and reshape them into something capable of perception, but doing so strikes him with a revelation disconsolate, and that is that there are no Others here - no Ancients, nothing, simply an empty plane of shifting light and bottomless dark. And he is alone.

He knows he did this, and it was for a reason. But he finds he cannot remember anything, not immediately, and when the memories trickle back with his concentrated effort they are unfiltered and unstructured and unordered until finally he can impose the alien concept of linear time upon the thing, and fully interpret what he is in comparison to what he was.

Daniel Jackson.

The name is the linchpin that generates the outward ripples, spreading from that singular point of origin. It triggers the flood of remembrance, the 'gate, Manhattan, the locked-away knowledge that was once sealed in his head but now coalesces seamlessly into the whole of him now. He cannot delineate his form by shape or size or mass, not any longer, but now he remembers, he remembers what it is he can do and how it is he can do it.

He starts small because he must, drifting as a pair of hydrogen atoms while he glimpses the city on a reduced scale. Then he builds to it, the recollection of his shape. Spectrally manifesting was never truly allowed before, but if there are no Others then he is not bound by their laws. He assembles a body that resembles the one that was human and familiar, and projects it. It takes two tries to succeed, three to sustain it for longer than a meaningless collection of seconds, and no matter what he tries he cannot force his shape to manifest with glasses. Apparently his inner self, or however he chooses to define it, does not need them.

He loses track of how many attempts he makes before he can maintain his form visibly for any significant length of time. But finally, in a ragged burst of energy, the bewildered shape of Daniel Jackson reappears in Manhattan, and there he stays.

[ooc: Daniel Ascended back during the Rift Shitfit of September 4th, and he's only just figured out how to Do Things in his new state of being. Right now he's completely intangible and frequently phasing in and out of visible existence. I've added to his handy-dandy reference post as to what he can and can't do in this state. He can also show up LITERALLY ANYWHERE so if you want in on Ascended funtimes just pick a date and a location, or Daniel can pick one, or whatever.]

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The innocent question cuts him to the quick. It is a simple, factual question with a somewhat less simple, factual answer he should nonetheless be able to express, but in the moment he cannot express it. Some autonomic response makes his lips tremble and robs him of his voice beyond a low whine that dies in his throat. Rashad shakes his head, a curt, jerking motion. "No," he chokes at last. "No more."

He wraps his arms around himself and fights back tears, unable even to name the mixture of grief, fear, and...something else....

"I have hurt no one!" he protests against some imagined accusation.

No more. What, so he was one but now - isn't? Daniel can't see anything he recognizes in the patterns of the waves and molecules, nothing that summons a familiarity with what he remembers glimpsing from Gabe or Lucifer. Then again, the guy is talking to someone who was human and now isn't, so maybe Daniel isn't in the position to be confused about this.

The second statement is what's more worrying at the moment, in addition to remarkably telling. Is he expecting people to ask him if he's hurt people? Has he? But the poor guy also looks like he's about to break down at any minute, so Daniel switches tactics.

"It's okay," he says, keeping his tone low and level and hopefully soothing. "I'm not accusing you of anything. Okay?" Very rational. Very reasonable. A very rational, reasonable apparition of a man who showed up out of nowhere.

The being -- this 'Daniel' -- has not attacked him, is not even accusing him. Denies accusing him. This scenario is painfully unfamiliar; he does not know what to expect from this being that appears like an angel but is clearly not an angel and he needs to know what he may expect. The unknown is no longer only an inconvenience, is now yet another source of anxiety.

He manages a little nod but does not relax from his useless self-cornering against the wall. "Why have you come?" he asks tremulously.

"Uhhh." That might make sense, actually, to assume he showed up for some kind of purpose. Typically that's what happens, isn't it? When people just poof into existence out of thin air, they do it for a reason, at least in Daniel's experience. But it doesn't seem to matter what he says, as it this person or former-angel or whichever is reacting pretty poorly regardless.

The apparition frowns, rueful and contrite. "Would you believe me if I said it was an accident?" He looks at his shape's hands, flexing fingers in mild bemusement. "I'm still kind of getting the hang of - everything."

Rashad's brow contracts almost painfully tight as he tries to make sense of the claim. An accident. Not a deliberate confrontation. He is unsure whether he does believe it, but he has no context within which to place the claim. "I do not know if I believe it," he admits.

Perhaps this Daniel also lacks such context. Perhaps -- perhaps indeed this encounter is not Daniel's doing at all, but that of the Rift. He must be brave. NO. He must be impassive, must take control of himself. "You do not know me," he says, attempting to ground himself with a truth that is more reassuring than it should be -- he should not be a despised thing, and yet he is. "Is this -- have you only now arrived here? Do you know where you are?"

Well, fair enough. Daniel's not sure he'd believe it either.

"No, I - " Hastily, he plunges into clarifications. "I've been here for a while. In Manhattan?" He grapples to retrieve a timeline, but no unit of time measurement immediately or conveniently presents itself, so he slides past specifics and heads right to his next point. "It's kind of a long story."

Understatement of the - whatever time constraint is most appropriate. Daniel's frankly not sure anymore. It's a little worrying.

"I'm not, ah," he says, holding up a hand as if for inspection, " - human at the moment, so I'm sorry, but uh, no, I, I don't recognize you."

"You are usually human?" This revelation is more confusing than anything else. Humans do not appear from thin air. Humans also do not seem strange and...more substantial in the way that Daniel does.

It is good that Daniel does not know him, and for a moment he does not understand the apology. He shakes his head again but does not clarify. "It is Manhattan," he confirms. "And I am -- I do not wish to be located."

"I used to be, yeah." Of course, he's not sure what he is anymore. "Like I said. Complicated."

And it looks like it's complications all around. He advances a cautious, insubstantial step, concern deepening the features of his projection, and the movement makes it waver, edges bleeding into obscurity before they sharpen again in the same instant. He redoubles his focus. He has to hold this shape, at least for the sake of -

"Look," he says evenly, "let's start this again, cause I'm not really clear on - any of it, really. You have a name?" Peering into the central mass of awareness of the thing was an ability he knows he once wielded, detection and identification of things beyond the human eye. But if maintaining a spectral shape has already begun to strain his concentration, Daniel doubts he wants to risk anything more.

Edited 2015-05-25 21:01 (UTC)

Rashad draws further upright at the movement, ready to -- he does not know, but ready -- only for increased tension to be supplanted by a rush of surprise and...intrigue. He already wanted to know what Daniel could be, but as he peers at the now stable shape of the other being Rashad is startled by the flash of realization that he wishes to know not only in order to assess a potential threat, but because he wants to know. Is Daniel insubstantial, or is the image before him an illusion laid over whatever true form he possesses?

No use. If Daniel is capable of explaining his existence, he has chosen not to do so.

"I am --" For a moment he feels the peculiar urge to be honest. He quashes it. "I am Rashad Durant." He of enduringly good sense. The selection seems less apt now than it once did. "This is not -- usual. I have lost much of late."

"Rashad." He repeats the name slowly, stretching the consonants experimentally. "I think I know you." The memories are disorientingly jostled, but the name rings as vaguely, distantly familiar, if only he could trace its origin.

He can't. Lost much can mean anything, and it doesn't help that Rashad's energy, his being, is comprised of something completely foreign to him. He can't begin to guess what Rashad is by composition - Ascension doesn't make him, or anyone, all-knowing. He has the capacity to understand, he's certain of it, but without any basis for comprehension he's useless.

"What have you lost?" he asks, tone falling somewhere between concern and curiosity, and then his form straightens with the realization. "Wait - the day we were cursed. You were - you kept getting things stuck you, right? The network - that was you?"

And there it is, the recognition he has feared. For a moment his breath catches (will this be it? None who know him and are still alive can be expected to treat him kindly), but then it whooshes back out of him in a brief, humorless laugh. Things stuck to him. Transformation into an inanimate object. His problems were so much more manageable back then.

"That was me," he agrees. "But I do not remember you."

At last he unpeels himself from the wall, his gaze still ever trained on Daniel, his body still poised for some undetermined but sudden action. His heart rate has slowed at last, and while he is not sure that he could be said to trust this new being, he is at least no longer convinced it must mean him deliberate harm. It might not be harmful to give this Daniel a direct answer. "I have lost my home and my employment," he admits. "And my...objectivity." This last thing is the most important, but he does not know how to convey the gravity of it.

"I was floating. Uh - my roommate was a cat?" If his construct were made of flesh and blood, it would have paled. Oh god. Seth. Has Johnny told him by now? How long has it been? Casting his awareness blindly like a net had yielded nothing - he doesn't remember how to detect the people he wants to detect, how to parse the flaring of varied and variegated energy signatures, how to separate one glow of being from the next.

But Rashad's moving away, no longer drawn into the corner like before, which Daniel is interpreting to be a good sign. Still anxious, he doesn't need to extend any wavering attempt at telepathic branching to understand that; the body language is fairly indicative in and of itself.

"Your objectivity?" The specter raises his eyebrows. That has a meaning he's pretty sure is lost on him, so he's going to focus on the two former. "So, what, you've just been living - here? On your own?" He expands his awareness around the alleyway and finds nothing that makes it seem particularly pleasant. It seems downright unpleasant once he evaluates it.

He recalls this. He recalls that it was not a person he knew, but that those were among the complaints he observed on the telephone network. He had assumed the man making those complaints was human, but perhaps his assumption was not incorrect at the time.

"I exist," says Rashad, because that seems more accurate to him than to claim that he lives "where I may. This place is largely undisturbed." Apart from when apparitions of former humans manifest in it, it would seem. "I no longer seem to require...contact."

"Contact?" The eyebrows climb at an alarming rate. "Like physical contact? Or, or communication? I don't understand what - "

He breaks off, focus sharpening. Whatever's going on with Rashad in the metaphysical sense isn't making any sense. He feels like there should be an order to it, but it's so beyond him that he can't be sure. Whatever it is, it's fragmented and chaotic, and difficult to discern.

"Look, I'm not - I'm just asking," he begins delicately. "But I can tell you're - you're not quite - human. Right?"

He does not understand. Why does Rashad continue to make erroneous assumptions about this being's comprehension? It seems somehow as though he should understand, but there is no rational reason to suppose such to be the case. It may be that his initial fear that Daniel might be an angel is still clouding his judgment.

"I have never been human," he says perhaps too sharply, insulted though it is clearly not meant as an insult. "This form is -- is flawed, but it is not human."

"Okay," he answers, pulling out the word and pulling back as well, having apparently struck a nerve. "I can see that."

Is Rashad having the same sort of inherent difficult in identifying Daniel as Daniel is with him? That's entirely possible, actually, especially if he's got sensory capabilities of his own. It might be he's lacking context, just like Daniel is.

"So, then." There's no polite way of saying it, though he tries to make it as tactfully as he can which is, currently, evidently not very tactful at all: "What are you?"

"Complicated." The non-answer is vindictive, and Rashad is immediately disgusted with himself for giving in to the petty impulse. His frown deepens and he looks ill for a moment. He is better than that.

Clearly he is not better than that.

"I am -- formerly -- an angel," he admits after a moment of uncomfortable silence. "Lately an eloim. Now...I do not know. The same thing, perhaps, but...injured."

"Injured?" Concern darkens his manifestation's features, even as he mentally unpacks the vocabulary. Eloim - related to elohim? 'God'? 'Power'? Or is it just synonymous with 'angel'? He's not like any angel Daniel's seen before, though, granted, he's only seen two - and originating from the same universe, to boot. That might explain how utterly alien this being's patterns and comprehensiveness and shape are to him.

"How'd it happen?" Daniel moves his form closer, hands up to indicate a peaceful disposition. He doesn't seem physically injured, just unkempt, like he hasn't been physically taking care of himself. But the disordered arrangement within him is what gives Daniel pause. Would the nature of the injury, then, lie in abstraction?

Rashad is not to know that the meaning of the term is far different in most worlds than in his own, or he might use one of the more general terms for a fallen archon rather than one specific to his type. It is still important, though, is it not? He was not a paynim deity, he was an angel. It matters.

He shifts his weight back but does not resume shoving his body into the corner. Is it wise to explain? Those humans who know of it have been unable to accept his nature and his needs, and this being has told him that he was lately a human.

No, he will not share the details. "It was an angel," he replies. "I do not fully understand what he has done to me, but I am not as I was. It is painful to me. I have suffered greatly."

Another angel? Daniel can't help but wonder, worriedly, if it's one that he knows. Lucifer, maybe. He could see the Devil exacting some kind of twisted revenge. He could see the Devil doing a lot of things.

"I can see that," he says carefully. "I mean - not just see but - sense, you know?" The wisdom of sharing what he is exactly is debatable, particularly since this is a person Daniel doesn't know very well at all. But Rashad's telegraphing his wary intent to keep back, so it's clear that an olive branch is going to need to be extended. The Rift is keeping him suppressed, shackled as Daniel is to Manhattan, but maybe the abilities of the Ascended are still at his disposal. Maybe he can help. Do something good with the energies he was once forced to resist using at any cost.

"Look, I might be able to help." He doesn't move any closer, not physically, but his awareness nudges forward, studying the molecular arrangement of the being before him a little deeper. "I don't know if I can exactly, but - I can try."

He does know what Daniel means, and that tells him something more about the being before him. He does not know what the being intends to do to help him when he ~~will not~~ cannot even explain what has been done to him or how or why.

But he is in pain.

He is aware that Daniel is doing something, but he cannot feel what, only senses that there is some shift in what might be deemed energy distribution around them. "What will you do?" he asks, desperate enough not to immediately refuse the offer.

"Heal you, if I can?" It's a stretch, and he's not even certain if he's wholly capable of it - he's only just now figured out how to manifest, and maintaining it is proving more and more difficult the longer it goes on. It's not an energy-to-matter interaction or vice versa, more akin to energy-to-energy in bizarre intersection of two elements from separate universes, possibly separate planes. It's worth a try - providing he can remember how to do it at all. Rashad is just so transparently miserable, and even if Daniel's appearance to him was unintentional, it doesn't mean he can't try to make something good come of it.

"I don't know if it'll work," he admits. "And you don't have to, I'd get it if you didn't, but - I can try."

This is a dangerous offer. Even if Rashad were certain he could trust Daniel (and that is yet another thing to regret, the loss of the ability to sense the telltale patterns of emotions associated with deliberate duplicity), it is not certain that the other being can help, or even that his efforts will not cause further harm. On the heels of that thought, however, comes the thought -- opinion? -- that whatever might become of him, it can hardly be worse than what he is experiencing now. If Daniel can put him right, realign being, he can cease to be the irrational, emotional thing he is now and return to his previous state. He was already only a fraction of what he should be, but at least he had the objectivity needed to attempt to comport himself in the correct way.

And if Daniel cannot, if he worsens Rashad's condition...perhaps then he will be too damaged to comprehend the pain of being what he is. That, too, might represent an improvement to his condition.

He sets his trembling mouth in a determined line and nods, first hesitantly and then a second time more firmly. "You may attempt it," he decides.

'Attempt' is pretty much all Daniel thinks he's got on hand, but the nod of consent is what he's been waiting for.

"All right," he says slowly. "I'm just gonna see if I can - "

The effort of maintaining a spectral manifestation in addition to trying to diagnose whatever's wrong is too much - his physically visible form dissipates between blinks, there one minute and slipped away in the next. He moves forward tentatively, silent and imperceptible save for the quiet vibration of presence, toward the central swirl that can more or less be categorized as Rashad. The whole of his awareness moves toward it, condensing to that central point as he tries to study the being's internal makeup. A sense of disorder is immediately evident upon first glance, and a second, more thorough perusal reveals the same. But he has no concept of what the arrangement should be, simply what it is, and without any form of baseline it quickly occurs to Daniel that he has no idea what the hell he's looking at.

He cautiously extends a filament of himself, projecting the need for reconstruction and order and -

He loses track of how things go.

He loses track of everything.

He thinks he might have manifested a few times in absence of knowing how else to combat the sheer amount of confused chaos that's descended upon him but it's hard to know exactly -

For a moment Rashad simply panics when his would-be savior steps forward and disappears into thin air. Did he break it? Did Daniel lie, did he run away, was he taken --

The seeming stillness of the empty alley is neither stillness nor emptiness at all. Rashad's rasping breaths are the only sound over the dulled hubbub of the city around them, but he does not long believe himself to be alone, not when he can feel -- when Daniel is -- there, but not in a way that correlates to any of his physical senses, not when he can feel the other being reaching in and -- and --

The moment when something changes is unmarked by any external sign beyond the strained cry it draws from him. It is shocking and painful but right, like blood rushing back into a numb limb, but it is too much, too much as the world sharpens around him and now he can taste the being that seems somehow entwined with him and he jerks away involuntarily, both physically and not.

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