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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Seth's not in the greatest place these days.

For a variety of reasons, really, though it was Daniel's death - however permanent that might prove to be - that kicked it off. He can't really blame himself for what happened to Daniel, not reasonably, but his mind finds ways regardless. Or else fills him with regret, at not having spent the time better, at not having told Daniel how he feels. Yet also knowing that it might not be too late, that Daniel might not really be gone, which means he can't even properly mourn, he can't try to get closure. And even in reasonably normal circumstances, he's terrible at finding closure anyway, he knows that from experience.

And then, well, there was what happened the other day at the rebel base, which he also has conflicting emotions about. On one hand he feels vindictive pleasure, and satisfaction at the thought that the place is no more. Then on the other, quite a lot of shame at what he did, how he felt. How ruthless he can be. He tries not to think about it. Part of him wants to believe in himself like Daniel did, that he's better than that, but then he looks at what he's done, how he feels...

As if that wasn't enough to keep him up at night, he still feels a bit like a mercilessly shaken fizzy drink bottle. He's got so many more powers running through him now, it's hard to keep track, or keep a lid on them. It's not as bad as it was, but it's more than enough to leave him feeling jittery and tense.

So it should be no surprise, really, that he's still awake at the middle of the night, looking unkempt and exhausted, staring at the wall and nursing a beer. He's run out of the stronger stuff, which is probably for the best.

Oh.

Well.

Maybe this is for the best. He'd been worried, he had, and maybe Johnny's told him by now, but there's no guarantee Seth will believe it. He recognizes where he's ended up as soon as he draws himself into visibility; even in vision cast in so many new planes, multifaceted and variegated, he's been here often enough to know where he is.

And so everything comes full circle.

He's honestly not sure what one says to this - he could go the Teal'c route, allowing Seth's mind or subconscious to delineate a scenario that he can simply insert himself into. Then there's the Jack O'Neill route, the veneer, the familiar flippancy meant to be transparent and easily interpreted along a conversation double-edged, but Daniel honestly can't be sure if either are the best route. He doesn't need to pick up on the sharp sting of alcohol in the air to know Seth's been drinking, and the heaviness of sleeplessness is a weight on Seth's mind all its own.

Right, and there's the other thing, the thing where doubt is usually the first reaction to instances like this, particularly if one happens to be drunk and insomniac. The mind's automatic impulse - distrust.

There are too many potential routes to be interpreted and Daniel knows he'll have to settle on one inevitably. Seth doesn't deserve this or any of it, and so he shifts his projection until it's distant and behind the man and when he speaks he speaks softly, laden with unspoken apology.

"So beer's not really what I'd call a traditional nightcap."

Seth might've thought he merely imagined it, but there's this prickle on the back of his neck that precedes the voice, noticeable even in his numbed state. Besides, he's imagined Daniel's voice in his head quite often in the past week - or more now? Seth hasn't been good at keeping track of the days. Enough to tell the difference, anyway. (The Daniel in his mind usually sounds a lot more disapproving and disappointed than the real Daniel would be.)

He jerks a little in his seat, a sudden twitch at the realisation of someone's presence. He's almost grown unfamiliar to it, having spent as much time alone as possible lately. Cutting short even visits from sympathetic, worried friends checking up on him. He's mostly only had Monty for company, and she doesn't exactly speak much.

"Daniel?" he asks quietly, almost imperceptibly so, turning in his seat. He sounds hoarse too, he realises - must be because of how his heart just leapt into his throat.

"Wish I could say 'in the flesh', but, uh."

And so maybe that was not the best joke he could have possibly made ever because, really, Daniel isn't really going for traumatizing here after the rough time Seth's probably been having. He can tell if it's late - early? - but Seth is drinking and spending his time staring brokenly at a wall and that's never a good sign.

"It's really me," he adds quietly, low and sincere. "I know it's - a lot to process right now." He pauses, wondering if there's anything he could possibly say to alleviate that joke that was honestly in incredibly poor taste. "Sorry."

Sorry. It's hopelessly inadequate. He's sorry he died, he is, and it really was an accident this time.

And he's sorry he isn't quite sure how to delicately broach the subject with anything but morbid humor.

To be fair, at this point it would take a lot to further traumatise Seth. This isn't even the first time someone he cares about has come back from the dead.

He's not sure what to say. Which is ridiculous, really, considering the amount of time he's spent considering and planning exactly what he'd say if Daniel reappeared. None of it seems to come to mind now.

Instead of saying anything he gets to his feet, setting the bottle on the table and staring at Daniel. Somewhat afraid to blink. He approaches Daniel's... ghost? Manifestation? Body. And he can't quite stop himself from reaching out to him.

The hand passes right through, and his heart sinks a little. "That's not just me doing that, is it?" he asks, squinting a little, letting his hand drop. His powers have been acting up so much these past few days he can't be exactly sure.

"No," Daniel answers unhappily. "Theoretically I should be able to physically manifest but I - can't, for some reason. Right now I'm choosing to blame the Rift."

Just another reason he can keep going and directing all his frustrations at the thing. It's probably - it's been a while, hasn't it? For a relative meaning of the term 'awhile'? That's not even really the Rift making it difficult anymore, it's just him. He's not built for linearity anymore.

When in doubt, blame the Rift. It's a policy that's served Seth pretty well too. Well, except for how the Rift doesn't seem to mind getting its vengeance.

"Are you okay?" he asks, in a voice that still sounds painfully small. He's having a little trouble looking at Daniel. He doesn't turn away, for fear for Daniel disappearing, but he also can't quite bring himself to look up and meet Daniel's eyes for more than a second at a time now. There's something clenched in his chest.

"In the loose sense of the word, sure." He tries for a smile, a light pull to one corner of his projection's mouth. His current blasé view on mortality and, more accurately, the lack thereof is something that creeps unconsciously into his tone, though he softens it almost immediately after. "You forget, I've done this before."

Sure, things might be different here in a way that's more than a little disorienting, but he's adjusting. He's adapting. He did say he wasn't planning on dying here, but apparently the Rift had other plans in mind. It wasn't a promise he intended to break.

"No, I didn't," he answers almost immediately. The fact that Daniel's died before, not just once but repeatedly, has been made very real to him lately. He may have fixated a little on it, in fact. Waking or asleep.

Without warning, or anyone's apparent influence, the stereo starts quietly playing Queen's 'The Show Must Go On.'

Edited 2015-06-04 02:13 (UTC)

His shape's head goes to one side a little, warmth fading into contemplation.

"No," he says slowly. "I guess you didn't."

Perceiving the whole of him is more difficult, particularly with the addition of powers unfamiliar to him, foreign pinpricks of energy. He watches one ignite in quiet fascination, and the immediate, physical response to it.

His projection frowns. "That's new."

Seth turns towards the speakers, the interruption finally making him take his eyes off Daniel. "Sorry," he says, a little embarrassed and hastening to turn it off. Theoretically he could do that with his mind too, but he hasn't quite gotten a grip on the power yet. It doesn't help that he got so many all at once, so not only does he need to figure out each one, but he has to do so while still struggling to tell them apart in his mind.

"It's... yeah," he answers, not sure if he wants to elaborate. He keeps looking at the now silent music player, as if waiting to see if Daniel's still there when Seth's not looking at him. He's still having trouble believing it's really him, waiting to discover it's just a hallucination or something.

"Got a handful new ones recently. Still figuring them out," he adds, flexing the fingers of his right hand a little without realising he's doing it, as if stretching out a cramp from taking too many powers.

"I can tell." That would explain the sheer number of them, compacted into his body and glowing like live embers. Or the metaphysical equivalent of live embers. It's hard to differentiate when one's existence regularly skirts the line between physical and metaphysical.

"I take it, ah - Johnny told you, then." They'd have to broach the topic one way or another, and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a set way to transition neatly from discussing the inner workings of new powers to so by the way, about the whole 'dead' thing.

Seth's not sure what to do with the information that Daniel can apparently tell Seth has new powers. And if anyone here has new powers that need discussing, really, it's Daniel. Considering his powers seem to change the rules of his existence.

"I have your glasses," he gives as an answer, looking up again now he's sure Daniel hasn't just vanished. It's actually one of the things that point away from hallucination - his own mental image of Daniel would wear glasses, but Daniel isn't. "And... well, the rest of your stuff."

"Right," says Daniel, deflating a bit because that's not exactly what he'd meant to discuss but it's a pretty reasonable point. "Well, um. I'm not exactly - sure how long it's going to be?"

His projection's expression twists, pained. "Everything's different here. I don't know how to descend and I, uh."

How does he put this. He can't say he's taking a recommendation made by Satan, even if it turned out to be, actually, a pretty good suggestion now that he's given it some thought.

"I don't know if I should," he finishes, slow and reluctant.

And that's about as long as Seth manages to keep looking at him. There's something painful twisting around in his stomach. The thought that Daniel could come back but won't is a lot more unbearable than him simply being unable to.

He walks over to the couch, needing to sit down, feeling slightly weak-kneed. He's not sure he can actually discuss that. Not without falling apart (again).

So the right call is simply to not discuss it, right? Just... plain ignore it.

"I, uh... Let that girl have your apartment," he says, voice constrained, staring at the wall again, unseeing. What was her name? "Tara. She was there, so..."

And now they're doing that thing where it's like they're having two different discussions, and if Daniel had the breath he would sigh. His form paces after, head tilted downward.

"Good," he says evenly. "She needed a place to stay. But - that wasn't my point."

He wishes he could remember how to make his projection's hands go into their pockets. It wouldn't be much, but it'd be a reassuring display of body language, an unmistakeably familiar and human one, and maybe something Seth needs.

"Look. Seth." He fixes Seth with a look, incisive and unblinking. "I died. And maybe I got over it, but that doesn't mean we can't - not talk about it. What I am now, you need to understand - it's different. And I have to learn how to handle that all over again."

No, no no no, how about they don't talk about it? They can absolutely not talk about it. Seth does not want to talk about it.

Because if he does, there's all this other shit threatening to spill out, and he can't deal with that. And now it's slowly starting to trickle into his brain that this really is Daniel, and Seth doesn't know how to deal with that, even after having tried to prepare himself for it. He's so different but also the same.

For a few moments he just sits there shaking his head, as if in denial, unable to form words. He can see Daniel's stare out of the corner of his eye and it seems to pierce through him.

"How?" he asks finally. "How is it different? What even are you? I mean, I tried to get Rush to explain, but then I punched 'im, and that kinda put a stop to the explainin, and you never really told me what it meant, so I don't know what..." he rambles, a hint of frantic nerves that eventually leave him trailing off.

Seth's anxious spike is painful and inevitable, the slow build to that escalation of nerves, and Daniel knows he couldn't halt its trajectory even if he tried. The guilt stabs at him regardless, for dredging this up at a time where Seth is clearly at an emotional low. He can't blame him for that, really.

"Okay, well punching Nick might not've been the best idea, for starters," he says lightly. He hadn't meant to derive what he had from Nick's head, but when he'd been swirling and bereft on a plane apart he'd had nothing, no points of reference and no means for understanding himself. That mind had been the only one that had pinged as recognizable to him, and so he'd latched onto it. And from there, well, whoops.

"It's difficult to explain." What he is now, what kind of things he's seeing, constantly, sorting through, constantly. How does anyone put that into words, make it comprehensible to someone on another plane? How the hell. "What I mean is - I'm energy. I'm - I see things, understand them, in a way that I just - couldn't, before." He pauses, frustrated. "There's not - I don't think Nick could explain it. I can't explain it. I'm on another plane and it's - "

His projection's voice fades. He can see atoms. He can see the way things come together. He can see the arrangement of this little slice of a foreign universe, all the phases of the matter it's comprised of.

"It's different," he finishes softly.

Nick. It takes Seth a few moments to realise Daniel is still talking about Rush. Seth doesn't think he's ever heard his first name. The last time Seth and Daniel had spoken about him, Daniel had called him 'de radish'. Granted, that had been a typo. Seth should probably apologise to Rush at some point. He's well aware it was misplaced anger, and that for all he knows Rush might've been a lot more distressed than he was letting on and it was just his way of reacting. Not that Seth has any intention of seeking him out any time soon.

Daniel's explanation, combined with the fact that he could apparently see that Seth has new powers, is... uncomfortable. Exactly how much can Daniel see about him now? And he doesn't think he can wrap his mind around it, so it probably doesn't matter that Daniel can't explain it.

He leans back in his seat, wondering if he should get another beer. He probably shouldn't. He's just finding all this a little hard to cope with. He picks up the almost empty one he already has and starts peeling off the label, giving his hands something to do.

"I've missed you," he says quietly. He doesn't quite mean for it to come out accusatory, but it does a little.

"Yeah, I - I really didn't mean to be gone for so long." His projection frowns. "Assuming it has been long. Things aren't - they're not linear for me anymore."

It shakes its head in mild frustration. There's no easy way to conceptualize it to someone who simply doesn't have the kind of awareness he wields now. "I didn't mean to leave you in the lurch like that. Though to be fair, I didn't exactly plan the whole 'dying' thing either."

Seth can't even imagine how it would be to not exist linearly. Despite the fact he's been familiar with time travel and alternate universes for a while now, it hasn't really been him doing it.

"Well, I'm glad to hear that," he answers, darkly joking. He pulls out his phone to check the date. He can't keep track of time passing as easily, but the date Daniel disappeared is seared into his mind.

"Nine days..." That's actually less time than Seth expected to wait.

Days in the human tradition are twenty-four-hour increments based on the Earth's revolution on its axis and the perceived fall and rise of the sun. He has to remember this, and apply it to the concept of nine days and he's not positive about it, but it feels like a rather short amount of time compared to the vague everything else. The genesis of the universe. The diverging of timelines. The formation of the Earth from molten rock.

In Seth's context, from the human perspective, it feels like it might be longer.

His projection hums in mild surprise. "Didn't take as long as before. 'Course, that might have more to do with how there aren't any Others here."

"Well, isn't that lucky then?" he answers, with almost aggressive nonchalance. He has no idea what to say. No reference for how to deal with a conversation like this. He's not sure what Daniel is even here for.

He decides to drain the beer and get a new one from the fridge after all, avoiding meeting Daniel's gaze. At this point he's still far too close to sober. There's too many complicated, conflicting emotions. So many things he wants to say, yet is afraid to.

He also feels like there's something a little... off about Daniel. Not just the lack of glasses or the lack of corporeality. Daniel's always been a bit... untouchable, somehow. Out of Seth's league. But he's usually been a lot better at hiding it, being affable and relatable. Now, however, it's painfully obvious. Like even with Daniel's presence, Seth still feels lonely. Though he's not sure if that's really anything to do with Daniel, or just Seth's own feelings of shame and isolation.

And immediately, some sort of barrier goes up, prickly and distant. Daniel doesn't move his projection to follow but leaves it where it is, head at an angle. It should be easier to glean insight now, being what he is, witnessing emotions coiling and uncoiling as they happen.

Understanding the emotion doesn't necessarily help him understand its cause.

"Okay," he says slowly. "I am sorry I couldn't come sooner. But in my defense, I had just died, so." He simulates a faintly bewildered shrug.

"That's not--" he starts, then breaks off. He takes a bottle out of the fridge, shaking his head while he opens it and takes a drink, before finally turning back towards Daniel.

"You've nothin' to apologise for. M'not angry at you," he says. He doesn't even know why Daniel would think so, why he sees the need to defend himself - except of course for how Seth is acting. He's the one keeping Daniel at arm's length here.

Another thing to feel guilty about. Here Daniel is, returning from the dead, and Seth can't even treat him properly, can't even tell him he's happy to see him. He wishes he could do so with some sort of physical gesture, a hug or a grip of the shoulder, something. He really wants to hug Daniel. There was nothing left for Seth to touch after he disappeared, and there's nothing now.

September 12/13 | Seth's apartment, 3 am

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