Event: Flu Season

[applesaucemod]

Ah, October. A time of crisp weather, beautiful foliage, pumpkin spice lattes—and the flu. Make sure you get vaccinated!

Of course, vaccinations can't keep you safe from everything. Especially not a capricious, omnipresent entity that has, quite recently, been treated to the highly entertaining sight of someone struggling with illness for the first time in their life. Oh, dear. Someone's been giving the Rift ideas.

On the morning of October 2nd, those rifties who would never consider getting vaccinated against paltry human illnesses--because why would they need to?--will find themselves awake to a new level of personal hell: the flu. It will instantaneously infect any entities who are generally immune to such things, leaving them snotty, achy, miserable, and completely powerless to stop what is happening to them. What is this?! Are they dying? Oh god, the pathos.

Symptoms will persist until October 4th. Get plenty of rest, stay hydrated, and maybe investigate the wonders of chicken soup. Probably don't go see a doctor. Clinic doctors will be very confused and unhelpful about your weird anatomy, and The Doctor will probably be really gross and contagious.

Definitely don't consult WebMD. No good can come of that.

[OOC: Post here for initial reactions or start your own threads using the tag Event: Flu Season. Characters who can be affected are: the Doctor, the TARDIS, Zagreus, Aziraphale, Crowley, Desire, Ascended Daniel, Gabriel, Lucifer, and Rashad. You could probably also make a case for various other non-human/not-quite-human folks. No one's gonna tell you you can't have the flu, okay. Go nuts.]

Comments

[johnny_truant]

Johnny looks askance at him as they move out into the street, and he starts walking slowly back to Gabe's building.

"Some kinda rift bullshit," he says. "Gabe's sick too. I guess everyone who shouldn't be able to get sick is sick today."

It's kind of funny, but he doesn't laugh.

"Listen, Daniel..." Daniel really looks like he is not in a great place to have this conversation, but Johnny doesn't know when he'll get another chance. "I'm... sorry. About that dream. That was... I know I was really fucked up."

He's not sure what else to say about it, though it doesn't feel like the end of a thought.

[peacefulexplorer]

"I suppose," Daniel says, slightly dour, decidedly less-than-enthused, and wholly nasal as his insubstantial nose decides to block itself with insubstantial mucus. "Can't say I'm a fan of this particular event."

At least last time, finding himself unexpectedly floating wasn't too much of inconvenience.

Then again, last time he wasn't dead.

He peers at Johnny, as focusing on him takes considerably more effort than it should. Then he frowns.

"It wasn't exactly a very accommodating dream," he says gently. "I wasn't really myself at the time either, if you'll recall."

Though technically, he was more himself then than he is now. But he thinks it's probably best that he not mention that.

[johnny_truant]

"I can't say I'm a fan of any of the shit it pulls," Johnny replies with a matching dour tone.

He's not happy about the comfort. He wants Daniel to be wary, unforgiving. He wanted that in the dream, too, and that's part of what set him off so bad, Daniel's constant kindness, his generous attitude toward everything. It makes Johnny cringe inwardly. Here, however, he has a much better grip on himself, manages not to go flying into a rage.

"I think I was more myself than you realize," he murmurs.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Eh," says Daniel, tilting a hand.

That's no solution, and he knows it. They both do.

"Anything, ah - anything you wanna - talk about, maybe?" He squints at Johnny and tries not to let wariness color his tone. It's a fragile offer, nothing more. He's doubtful Johnny would want to address any of it openly, but after everything - after the man watched Daniel die on the floor of his apartment - it would only seem right, fair, that he put forth that quiet offer.

[johnny_truant]

God. Johnny chews his lip, looking at the ground, his feet. "Not... really," he admits. "I mean, it's... I'm not..."

Ugh, he so does not want to have this conversation, least of all with Daniel when he's both a wise ghost thing and sick and miserable.

"I'm not normal, okay?" He says it with more vehemence than he intends, and he lets out a soft grunt, trying to rein himself back in. "Sometimes I just... get like that. That dream was fucked and it was just easier to..." He looks away. "That's all there is."

[peacefulexplorer]

Johnny's discomfort is sharp-edged and constant, something turned inward and seeded in a faint impression of ashen wood, dark amorphous spaces, the shape and build of a construct that defies spatial logic.

"I can't imagine what that's like," Daniel says quietly.

His manifestation picks that particular time to sneeze, and for a moment he's gone.

The next, he's fallen into step alongside Johnny again, on his other side, seemingly unaware of the interruption.

"I do know what it is to have something in you that you can't control," he says. "Something you want out of you. It's a - terrible, helpless feeling. And I'm sorry."

[johnny_truant]

No, he can't. Johnny's almost relieved to hear him say it, so he doesn't have to feel it in his gut, push back against whatever encouraging fucking platitudes most people try to layer onto him.

He jumps slightly when Daniel sneezes himself out of existence - hell of a conversation-ender - and then he's back.

And, to Johnny's immense surprise, he's saying something that actually does feel familiar. He looks over at Daniel, a little curious, a little uncertain how to respond.

"Yeah," he murmurs eventually. "Yeah, it is."

Not sure what else to offer about that. The apology is uncomfortable so he doesn't answer it. He looks back at the ground.

[peacefulexplorer]

"I am sorry I couldn't be more helpful," he adds in a poor attempt to steer the conversation to someplace less grim. And failing, clearly, as he can't really seem to wrest them out of this vein of thought in which they're incontrovertibly mired.

Also, his head has begun to hurt.

Also, he's energy, so he doesn't have a head.

Also,

Daniel realizes he's left his earlier point hovering without any real resolution.

"In the dream," he clarifies, blinking rapidly as his perception of the world fuzzes out and in again with distressing irregularity. "And - and now, I guess. If I had the kind of power I'm meant to have like this, I'm sure I could." His shape looks at the ground, dejected. "But I can't."

[johnny_truant]

"It's okay," says Johnny, now extra uncomfortable with all this desiring to help. Whatever. "You're not obligated to help me."

He glances up at Daniel, eager to move the conversation away from him. "Do you think you're maybe... becoming like... human again?" he ventures.

[peacefulexplorer]

It's less of a sense of obligation and more of a sense of - well, wanting to help, wanting to do something. The dream that he shouldn't have had, the one drifting back to him in unsettling fragments and unremembered scraps, had contained a Johnny so stark and so lost and so miserable and, though he hates to admit it, so openly unnerving, that he can't not want to offer some sort of consolation.

Clearly, Johnny has other things on his mind. Daniel lets him guide the discussion elsewhere, tips his manifestation's head back in the appearance of someone studying the sky.

"I don't know," he admits. "I'm starting to have more luck, I think. Figuring out how I could do it. Descend. But, ah - there's a lot," he says slowly, "that could go wrong."

[johnny_truant]

"Really?" That gets Johnny's attention. He'd kind of come to take it for granted that Daniel would be coming back for real, just, you know, when he was good and ready. This suddenly makes it sound a lot more ominous. "Like... like what?"

[peacefulexplorer]

Daniel grimaces, his shape's mouth twisting into a bitter, mirthless parody of a smirk.

"I might come back wrong," he says, brief and matter-of-fact. "I might up somewhere else, anywhere else. I might not be able to remember who I am. Transducing energy to matter permanently is, it's - it's not done among the Ascended, not typically."

His atoms feel dry and frayed, like the wind shearing through an open sore.

"It's a risk," says Daniel, looking at the city and the rise of the buildings, the shape of the tiny fragment of world to which he's been tethered. "The human brain isn't really built to contain what I can comprehend now. The strain of it could, ah." He winces, speaking smaller and swifter, as if it could make the possible consequence less horrifying by sheer virtue of skirting the topic. "Break my mind? Potentially."

[johnny_truant]

"Um." Johnny stops short, looking up at him. "But you've done it before, right? And it was okay?"

He's in no position to be giving advice here, or acting like a hopeful child trying to justify why this is a risk someone else should take. Maybe Daniel's better off staying as he is. Maybe this would only make things worse.

"I mean is there," he barrels on, grasping at straws, "is there any way someone could... help you? Gabe, maybe?" When he's not dying of plague.

[peacefulexplorer]

"I did it in a universe where I could." He can't quite look at him, his expression too marred with guilt and self-reproach and uncertainty. "And it - didn't go so well the first time. It took a while for me to remember anything, let alone who I was."

But all the same, the temptation to try is almost overwhelming. As useful as it is, as much as he can see and know and understand like this - there's very little he can do from this angle. Ascended like he is now, the only impact he can make is on the Rift itself, and it simply won't shift to accommodate him.

"I don't know," Daniel says carefully. "It might help. It might make things worse. The only person here who might have the slightest idea how to, well - he doesn't exactly have the same kind of hands-on experience that I do."

[johnny_truant]

"What, Rush?" Johnny gives Daniel a dubious look. "Yeah, plus I kinda doubt he'd, you know, be helpful, on account of being a heinous asshole."

He hesitates, shifting his weight. He's close to home now, and he doesn't exactly want to invite Daniel in on Gabriel, especially when they're both impossibly sick. And with how he'd rather keep his... episode... to himself.

"Well," he says after a moment. "It'd be good to have you back? But... it's better to have you around in some capacity than... not."

Not very helpful, he suspects. But he knows ultimately the choice here is Daniel's.

He looks at Daniel's sickly face and then down to his bag. "Wish I could offer you some broth," he says wryly.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Nick's not so bad, really," Daniel says absently. "He's got a lot on his mind."

Though, truthfully, he'd been interpreting Nick's perception of himself through an isolated outlook into his mind while Daniel had been relatively unsure of his own identity and current form and shape and had simply latched onto the first mind that pinged as remotely familiar, and he's realizing too late that this might be an odd thing to share with someone.

"Thanks," he says ruefully. "I really do wish I could - "

He trails off, adopting an expression of world-weary, frantic resignation.

"Oh shi - "

In the next sputtering sneeze, he's gone again.