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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"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.

He's adrift, helpless and swirling, back on a plane he knows is not the tangible, physically recognizable one. He casts out blindly, seizing at the strands and tangles of himself and pulling them back into the physical knot that forms the basis of manifestation.

Daniel reappears above the city's cloud cover, his reconstructed shape's feet planted firmly on empty air.

"Oh sh - "

Abruptly, he restructures back in the grimy alley way, unexpectedly behind Rashad, his energy numb and vibrating as if having just received the metaphysical equivalent of an unpleasant electric shock. Again he yanks himself back into relative order, enough to vocalize with what he's hoping is a complete and unalarming spectral manifestation, "did it work?"

Daniel is abruptly gone, leaving Rashad panting in the alley as he tries to discern what has changed. For a moment he hoped that it was over and done -- but hope itself is a symptom of his illness, as is the crushing despair that follows remembering that should all his desires come true he would not feel glad, or relieved, or anything, but would simply be once more.

Somehow, though, it is...better. Improved. There is the illogical sensation that perhaps the worst is quite suddenly behind him. His internal being is still in disarray, but it is not quite so difficult now to focus on the world outside of himself.

He flinches at the sudden presence behind him, whirling to face the apparition that had left him moments before. "I --" he falters, not sure how to answer. "It is -- not entirely."

"No?" He tries not to sound disappointed, but at least Rashad looks a little more put-together. A little less utterly terrified. He's choosing to interpret that as a good thing.

He considers his shape, the difficulties of maintaining it. "I dunno if I can try that again. I'm still trying to remember how to do everything while I'm like - this."

The vague 'this'. The whatever-he-is. Ascended, sure, but to an extent he can't quite discern. If he was fully on the higher plane, surely he wouldn't be impeded by the Rift, would he? Maybe he's just partway? Not lower, not higher, simply - existing in some perpetual limbo.

It's not a comforting thought. The void that greets him whenever he instinctively reaches for any Others is both lonely and intensely terrifying.

"It is enough," decides Rashad, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. The edges of his mouth twitch upward, and he is surprised to realize he is -- happy. He is not very happy, which makes it all the stranger and more alien to him, used as he is to experiencing only the most extreme forms of joy. It is...pleasant. For now. Feeling that it will end makes it so. "I think I might perhaps be able to heal now, given time."

It is easier now, too, to taste at Daniel, his senses carelessly prodding the outer reaches of the other being. This creature might almost be confused for an angel even with his senses intact, but there are sharp differences, something about him that does not ring true for any type of archon. Rashad has never seen a creature moving upward through the scale of being, only downward like himself, but if Daniel was truly human before now....

"You are something I have not seen before," he observes.

Hey, but at least Rashad seems more at ease, almost happier. That kind of makes it worth it. Daniel quirks the corners of his projection's mouth into a smile, pleased to have, well, succeeded in actually doing something. Maybe here, like this - he actually turn what he is toward something good. Something helpful.

The tingle of another presence brushing at his doesn't go unnoticed, and he looks at Rashad sharply. He's grateful he remembers how to smooth his edges into something less easily penetrable should the man get overly curious, but there's no denying or concealing what he is. It's too bright and too brazen, just on principle.

"You're something I haven't seen before," Daniel admits, trying and failing to push his manifestation's hands into its pockets. Self-interaction needs work, apparently. "Though I am kind of getting used to seeing things more how they are." Rather than the illusion of humanity so many of them seem skilled at projecting.

The smile eases its way back off of Rashad's face. If Daniel can see him for what he is, perhaps it is a blessing he lacks the context to know what he is looking at. "I ceased to be all that I should some time ago," he admits sadly. He reaches out to touch the form before him, but holds back his hand a few inches from the apparent shoulder -- he does not wish to disrupt Daniel's manifestation, which seems unstable now that he is able to think outside himself enough to notice these things.

But for him to be such a thing as Daniel himself -- not to be compressed in the mortal-like shell he has too quickly come to accept as his own body as though it were a natural thing. He has always had the awareness that he is not as he should be, that he is less than, but like so many things it should only be a simple matter of fact. He should not be capable of regret.

"This will not last," he reminds himself. "It will end now."

Maybe that explains some of the chaos gnawing away at him. Daniel didn't glean any sense of incompleteness when he'd tried to repair him, or fix him, or heal him, or however he chooses to define it. But then, he didn't recognize any of what he came across, so he'd have no way of knowing.

He watches the hand stretched toward him with an almost wistful regret. Intangibility has its uses, but until he can figure out how to physically manifest it's more or less permanent. And while presenting himself like this is handy for communication's sake, it's not exactly practical or sustainable for very long. He has no idea how long his tenuous connection to his own shape will last, and it feels like it's growing harder to maintain the longer he holds it.

"What won't?" he asks, caught between curiosity and trepidation. "What's - what's ending?"

It is somewhat easier to explain now that he is calmer, and there seems to be little harm in telling Daniel what manner of healing Rashad believes he has wrought now that he has trusted the being so far as to allow him to interfere with his core self. "Emotions," he clarifies, fighting against some fluttering feeling -- fear that he is wrong? "If I heal, I will regain my objectivity."

"Objectivity - " And just like that, that brief warm fuzzy feeling dissolves. In its place creeps a sense of profound unease.

Objectivity.

It's what the Others valued. Emotions were obstacles, to be freely shed and ignored. Objective insight was crucial. Detachment. He'd refused to become impartial and impassive and indifferent, clung to that incredibly human part. It was why they cast him out.

Oh, god.

Did Daniel just restore that? Is that what he did? He can't tamp down the swelling sense of wrongness, alarmed and uncertain.

"No, you - emotions - those are important," he insists, fear now dampening his former triumph in earnest. "You can't just ignore them when it's convenient."

That wasn't the reaction Rashad expected. The creeping fear in the air is neither anticipated nor wanted, but it is not fear that creeps into and through Rashad. He is not healed yet, clearly, because what he feels is a flash of irritation ~~all his own~~ foisted on him by some useless, irrational autonomic reaction.

"They are not natural in me," he snaps. Why can Daniel not simply be happy that he is going to return to -- not the way he is meant to be, but something closer to it? "I should not have them. It was an error, one I thank you for rectifying."

He doesn't sound very thankful at the moment, though. He ~~pouts~~ glowers at the incorporeal being before him -- the one he might be thanking preemptively, if this is all the improvement he can expect in the minutes following the attempt.

"That doesn't matter." The shape he's made shakes its head, aghast. Emotions weren't natural to the Ancients after untold years spent on a higher plane, where they maintained that objectivity was their one constant.

"You're here now," he says. "On Earth. That makes you a part of this world, and emotional states come with that. It's part of this - being human." Rashad doesn't have to be human, technically, and it's clear that whatever he is, he's not. But he's living like one, and that's enough.

"It is all that matters! I am not human, and I will experience emotions only when I choose!" To think he had sought these experiences, hungered after emotions even when he wasn't on the brink of starvation. When he is healed it will be different. He will pick and choose and he will maintain the control he has lacked.

He shakes his head, mouth set in a deep downward curve. He had thought Daniel was different. He had liked Daniel.

Liking things is part of the affliction.

"I am not human," he repeats. "And I should not be."

"I'm not human either," says Daniel quietly, and he makes no effort to suppress the subtle ache of sympathy pinned behind the words. "That doesn't mean I'd ever let that part of me fade. What I am now - like this, I've been encouraged to let go of that. But I haven't. And I won't."

He moves his projection closer with even, controlled steps. The semblance of physical substance. Either it's getting easier or he's not paying enough attention to the process itself, the difficulty of maintaining the details. He doesn't care.

"I was cast out for it. I was maligned, seen as a, as a failure. But it was worth that." He searches Rashad's stare, the clear lines of unhappiness in his form and his face. "I wouldn't give it up for anything."

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