bigapplesauce | Sep. 6th, 2014

Sep. 6th, 2014

Aziraphale is very happy to be doing nothing.

Spike's not in and it's Sunshine's day off, which is fine as well. Aziraphale's already proudly purchased a scone and even made small talk with Liz while she watched him hawkishly, clearly expecting him to ask after their absent baker, then attempting to conceal surprise and even disappointment when he didn't. He felt rather pleased with himself for that.

Crowley slouched on by before long, playing hooky with his ROMAC duties, of which he as yet has very few. Now he's draped in the back, presumably entertaining himself or dozing, while Aziraphale busies himself with idleness. He creates a computer for the shop, to track the real books he's collected - not very many, so far - and to add to the general ambiance of the place. True to form it is a very old, miserable-looking desktop Macintosh, dusty and barely functional, with a noisy dial-up modem. He's frowning thoughtfully at it, working on an overcomplicated spreadsheet and munching on his scone, when the door surprises and offends him by opening.

Current Location: Aziraphale's bookshop, 1st & 87th
Current Date: 11 July (backdated)

peacefulexplorer

Coffee was developed in Ethiopia circa the fifteenth century, though there have definitely been indications of coffee-drinking as a habit in Yemen, and the developmental process of learning to cultivate it and then brew it and then mass-produce it and then manufacture it to consumers must have had a truly tremendous impact on the growth of human history when one considered it in the broader historical context. There must have been countless world leaders who loved their coffee, who were addicted to coffee, who required it to function, who made their best and worst and most historically influential decisions while drinking coffee or waiting for coffee or having been deprived of coffee for unreasonably long stretches of time.

No matter how many stimulating linguistic exercises Daniel puts his brain through (break the word down to its origins, from the Dutch koffie to the Arabic kahwa to the Turkish kahveh until finally the definitive term itself was developed in the sixteenth century), he always seems to loop back to the extreme, infinitely frustrating lack of coffee.

The fifteenth century had coffee.

And he does not.

His hand creeps up to take off his glasses so the other can massage his pounding forehead. He’s already resolved to add “instant coffee” to the suggestion box of things that could improve the conditions of extended offworld missions. The SGC probably doesn’t actually have a suggestion box, so he files away a reminder to suggest that they get one. Civilian feedback might not seem all that important to them but they should know by now that those opinions have got to count for something and - oh, hello.

Caffeine withdrawal forgotten, Daniel’s thoughts abruptly divert to the singularity taking place in front of him.

It’s almost like a wormhole but not - not quite. Roughly conical, shifting. There’s something off about it. No gate, for one. And for another, it - well, it pulses.

The glasses go back on and Daniel scrambles to his feet and stares, squinting at the apparent spaciotemporal anomaly that has just formed without warning.

“Hello,” says Daniel, just in case the thing is sentient. He raises a hand and waves.

The not-really-a-wormhole doesn’t respond in any obvious way. Daniel’s head tilts to one side as he watches the thing swirl and shift in its oddly mesmerizing, seemingly unpatterned movements. He tries communication again, speaking as one scientific anomaly to another.

“Do you understand me?” Daniel asks slowly. “Are-are you, ah, alive?”

He probably shouldn’t get any closer. He probably shouldn’t -

The thing swells unexpectedly, wrapping some indistinguishable force around Daniel and pulling -

Oh, hell.

And then he is suddenly, inexplicably somewhere else. Somewhere that looks suspiciously not like P5X-909 but that felt nothing like beaming technology and he was on P5X-909 not ten seconds ago. It felt like ten seconds, though Daniel knows better than to trust his own perception of time when he's been known to mistakenly spend entire days poring over the same translation.

Daniel stares at the fountain he's unceremoniously ended up at, crowned with an angel holding its wings and arms outspread. If he didn't know better, he'd say -

He'd say he's on Earth.

If he ever comes back from this one, he’s going to add “keep Daniel Jackson from dying in every unpleasant way imaginable” to the suggestion box.

Current Location: Bathesda Terrace
Current Date: July 13th (backdated)

wentdowntogeorgia

Lucifer falls.

This is old news for everyone involved. He fell from Grace, he fell from Heaven, and after the so long awaited confrontation in Stull Cemetery, he and his once-beloved brother and the promise of violence, he fell back into the Cage in the body of Sam Winchester.

Now, when he falls, he feels a shift around him like the universe cracking open at the seams; there is the smell of ozone and a lightning-snap that’s louder than even Sam’s fearful internal monologue, louder than the terror that pounds his frantic mortal heart at the sight of Perdition yawning wide beneath him. He is yanked sideways, sudden lateral movement that would be dizzying if he had a center of balance to upset, a rip-tide pulling him in and down and through the rabbit-hole, shadow-thin and darkling deep.

The body that is supposed to be his—that has had his name written over and across and around every fiber of its being since its conception—is suddenly far away, and he is wrapped in the old, familiar skin of a vessel he’d left dying in Detroit, flesh given freely rather than claimed by divine right. And then he is a streak in the sky that hits water and sinks like a stone.

Under the water, cold and getting colder from the seed crystal that is his freezing Grace in its mortal house, he can feel the vast emptiness where Heaven should be above him and isn’t; the universe is silent and it is deafening, a tinnitus ring where there should be angels’ voices. Lucifer grabs two fistfuls of space-time and pulls, moving himself from under the water to standing in the shallows at the bank, and behind him the lake’s surface is already frozen over thick like it’s the dead of winter. The water around his feet is sluggish and barely liquid, filmed over top with a thin frozen layer that breaks and flows around his ankles.

Someone approaches him with a towel, and there is no Hell below him and above him only sky, and he makes no reply; he banishes the water from his clothes with a thought before he puts his fist right through the man’s chest.

[[ooc: So this is going to be the hottest of messes; see mod comment for post instructions and fun stuff like that.]]

[[TW: gore, major character death.]]

Current Date: 14 July

The Big Applesauce

Sep. 6th, 2014

Sep. 6th, 2014

There Goes The Neighborhood [closed]

That Wasn't Beaming Technology [closed]

I Thought of Angels, Choking On Their Halos [open]

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