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

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Current Music: September 11th - 13th

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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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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."

"You were human." And for one or two steps, he actually backs away, as though it will do him any good. He does not like this side of Daniel, this cajoling attempt to convince him of something that flies in the face of the commandments. "It is wrong for me to be this way," he argues. "It is a sickness."

It is not difficult to recall the old words, and he allows the twelfth commandment to come rolling past his lips with all the authority a man quivering with indignation and anxiety can muster. "Know thy place: mortal to Earth, angel to Heaven. The place of mortals is the Earth, the place of angels is the Heavens - neither side shall seek to change the right and natural order," he says.

Nor covet a higher station, he does not say.

"Okay, but what if you're neither?"

He looks at Rashad with a new intensity, an desperation to understand. "Because I'm not. I'm - something else, I don't even know what. And you told me." Rashad isn't behaving like a construct without emotions; he seems frustrated and angry and alarmed, and Daniel shifts his projection forward again. "You told me you weren't an angel either."

Rashad's hands twitch and he tries to remember that violence will not help this situation. Needless violence is an inherently entropic act...and he does not expect he would succeed at harming Daniel.

He does not want to harm Daniel.

He wants Daniel to stop advancing.

"Thou shalt not change the natural order of things as formed in their divine Order," he says, jaw tense as he looks away and takes refuge in twisting another commandment to suit his argument. "I am whatever I am."

The body language is too much to bear. Rashad's energy has become prickly and unbearable, and Daniel's manifestation halts, even if the energy that he is still flows, nudges forward by increments.

"The natural order is just the way things fall into place," Daniel insists softly. "It doesn't need to be maintained. It just happens."

"There is only Order or Darkness," growls Rashad. "Follow the path of Order or be consumed by Darkness." Why is it so hard for him to look at Daniel now? He has nothing of which to be ashamed. He is not ashamed. There is nothing wrong with him, nothing that will not heal and be right again. "Entropy will destroy this world and all worlds."

It's like he's reciting a prayer, some kind of dogmatic litany to force Daniel away. It's clear that his presence is simply generating anger or defensiveness or distress at this point, but he can't not address what seems to be a fundamentally flawed set of principles. Especially since he just inadvertently healed the being recounting them.

"There's more than just one or the other," he says, frustrated and intent. "Just - creating false dichotomies where they don't exist? I'm pretty sure that's the only entropy at work here."

"There is not!" He was not aware he was going to raise his voice to a shout until he did so, but the outburst is enough to bring him back around to staring Daniel down. "You wish to complicate what is simple, to make of one thing another! I will not have it!"

Rashad's hands appear to have caught fire. He is not sure when he did that.

The swelling and burst of bright conflagration is impossible to ignore, and he sees it in every plane and level as it blazes on Rashad's hands. It's similar to the sort of internal makeup that Rashad seems to be comprised of, probably physically lethal, but as he is now Daniel simply looks at it. For a moment he's grateful he can't seem to manage a corporeal manifestation.

"What if you're simplifying what is inherently complicated?" He looks at Rashad with undeniably melancholic sympathy. Experience has taught him that, if anything, arguing against such a staunchly rooted belief is doomed to never succeed.

But Daniel's never been one to stop trying.

"The world doesn't exist on scale of black and white. It can't function like that. Nothing could."

"I could." The aetheric fire is wasteful, pointless. He does not put it out. "The world could. Mortals could, if they would only try harder."

Deep down he knows this conversation has no use, that no good will come of it. Daniel is a stubborn, conceited mortal like so many others he has met, semi-angelic powers or no. "How is it not one of you can seem to see your place in the world?" he asks desperately. "We are all part of a greater whole, but each of you acts as though the world began and ended with your little lives."

Unlike Rashad, obviously. He has never behaved selfishly; he has only ever worked to improve the condition of things, work toward universal categorization and stasis.

He has tried, at least.

"But you're not," Daniel points out gently. "Right now? You're not."

His manifestation's head goes to one side. He wants to express compassion for the stubborn being, but he doesn't know how. Rashad is probably simply clinging to the one thing that makes any sense to him in a world twisted beyond his recognition.

"Because the greater picture is relative," he continues, and begins moving the steps of his projection forward again, steady and unrelenting. "And there's no universal way of looking at it. Can't you see that?"

"I cannot under these conditions--!" The protest cuts off with a frustrated noise in his throat as the fire spreads up his forearms, his hands raised in a halfheartedly defensive posture he knows will not do him any good. It is not fair, Daniel should not point these things out. He recognizes the hypocrisy of his statement, of the claim that mortals should control themselves under these conditions when he cannot. It is justified, though, is it not? They are made to be this way and he is not. The disadvantage is his.

He shakes his head again, the motion turning into a constant wagging back and forth of impotent disagreement. "It cannot be relative. There is a purpose, I had a purpose, and I understood when I saw from Heaven's perspective."

The fire roars up, and Daniel's supremely grateful that no civilians seem to be stopping to view the confrontation or interfere in the slightest. Rashad - former-angel, or whatever he is - isn't something Daniel would be able to face directly if he were human.

Fortunately for them both, he isn't human. Not anymore.

"Purposes change," he says evenly. "Mine did, when I Ascended. People change - the status quo changes, constantly. Really, the only thing that is constant is that things will change."

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

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