Housekeeping 07
Here we go, another one of those posts for compiling some of the random bits and pieces that I haven't done anything with. Not a lot, this go, since mostly what's cluttering up my hard drive at the moment are WIPs (apocafic, I'm looking at you), although next time that 'post pieces of your WIP-fic' meme goes around, I am so there.
Anyway. This one happened -- I think -- after some chatter in someone else's journal about the SGC being haunted. I want to say it was paian, and not just because I tend to blame everything on her, as she's a sneaky little enabler. (ps, Komos, remind me to post pictures of those cookies.) It also has to have the crackiest OC I've written in any fandom, ever. Not the crackiest scenario, but up there. Just, cracky, in general.
--
The first time they actually meet, he feels it immediately, the first time he goes back to the SGC, an indistinct feeling of another somewhere very nearby. Not Oma, Daniel’s learned what she feels like, knows it without thinking, but there is a sense of likeness that piques his interest. He waits as Jack and Sam and Teal’c step into the elevator and rise towards the surface, as General Hammond turns to make his way down the corridor, and then lets himself drift without intent. The other will find him, if they want to.
And she does. He’s not too far from the elevator switch when the presence blooms beside him and he can feel the other reaching towards him. Daniel’s not very good at sensing yet - he still misses a good half of what Oma sends him and he’s used to her - and so he falls back to what he started with and projects a body. Soon after the other detangles slightly and does the same, and suddenly Daniel is standing in a hallway of the SGC with the illusion of a girl, maybe 10, in a red sundress and high-tops, as airmen pass through them without notice.
“Not bad,” she says, looking him over. “Little fuzzy around the edges, though.”
He knows. Oma doesn’t particularly encourage projecting, and he’s had to practice on his own. “...Thanks?”
She grins, sends a flash of amusement back at the confusion he’s not quite able to block. “Sorry. I’m Poe.”
“Daniel,” he says, and she just smiles, flickers the impression of waiting, and when the penny drops Daniel is distracted enough that he briefly loses hold on the projection, has to refocus to smooth it out again. “Poe as in….”
“That’s me.” More amusement, a vague gesture towards the floor. “I’m not usually up this high, but I felt you around. Wasn’t expecting you’d be back so soon, by the way.”
“I’m - confused.”
“Yes, I’m getting that.”
He blinks at her, reflexively moves out of the path of a member of SG-11 on his way past. “You’re the ghost on 13.”
“Well, not a ghost. And I’m not actually on level 13 that often, although as I understand it there’s some kind of dogmatic significance to the number?”
“Uh, a superstition.” Daniel hesitates, cautiously reaches out to see if he’s missing something, but all she’s giving is the same sense of something like mirth and the projection of a sly smile. “Can I ask why?”
Poe shrugs. “Actually, now that you’re one of us, no reason, really.”
Now that he… “You were watching me?”
“Well, not all the time. I like the - security monitoring station? Yes. Nice men.” She must pick up on the wave of irritation that slips out, because she sighs, or - no, just gives the feel of one. “I owed a favor.”
“To Oma?”
“She had an interest,” Poe says. And it’s weird, it’s still very weird, but if that’s the case Daniel supposes he can’t exactly complain about the…observation. All things considering. Poe appears to lean back against the wall, looks on almost fondly as a few of the infirmary staff wait for the elevator. “I’ve rather enjoyed myself, actually. Never been to this planet before. I think I might stay a little longer.”
The last time they actually meet it’s in Jack’s office and she’s being absolutely no help at all. “I think your nose is crooked,” she says, lurking in the corner. Daniel ignores her. (He has to ignore pretty much everything unless he wants to come out missing something vital. Like, say, his memory.) “Honestly, that’s not where I remember it being.”
He loses his hold and everything unravels. If there’s a trick to this descension thing, he can’t figure it out. “Don’t you have some hallway you’re supposed to be screwing with the temperature in?”
“Jesus, chill.”
“You are spending way too much time here.” Between the waffles and Poe, who’s spent a considerable portion of the last hour humming something disturbingly rock & rollish, Daniel is starting to suspect that there’s something viral about the SGC and American pop culture. Corrupting higher planes one ascended being at a time; he wonders if this is all somehow his fault. “You know, I don’t get it. Oma leads you to complete enlightenment and you do is haunt the SGC.”
“Backatcha,” she says. “And anyway, if Oma’s out of the game, someone has to keep an eye on things around here.” Her presence starts to drift off, then returns, briefly. “Project what you’re going for first and fill it out from there.” And then Poe’s gone, presumably up to play with someone’s computer monitor or rescue some lost car keys, as usual.
Her advice works, except later Daniel is pretty sure he was projecting with clothes on.
After that they never speak again, although Daniel does notice a significant increase in the amount of random objects that go spontaneously missing from his office or his locker, only to reappear somewhere else entirely a week later. And random audio files on his computer play as ‘All Along the Watchtower’ for years.
--
Opening to an attempt at an apocalpyse_kree fic that didn't end up going anywhere.
--
The first time Jack saw Daniel, it was in a field of rubble and twisted metal that used to be a parking lot, and it was long before Daniel saw him. Daniel saw kneeling beside the twisted column of a light post and staring up at the sky in profile, and Jack moved towards him in near silence. The sky was near silent too, cut only with a faint underlying roar, far off, like a passing jet. There were no sirens. Jack thought there should be sirens.
There was no ship, either, and Daniel stared up at perfect, puffy white clouds and didn’t move.
Jack was almost on top of him, just about within arms reach, just about to whisper for him, when Daniel turned and lunged at Jack with a piece of something in his hand that glinted in the sun. He was overbalanced, though, and missed even as Jack snapped a hand out to deflect the hit, and they both went toppling over into the dust. Something nearby fell with them, and pebbles and small bits of debris rained down and scattered.
It was too easy for Jack to pin him, to get a hand over his mouth; he waited until the wild stare softened into recognition, and then eased off and sat back, slowly. Daniel sat up slowly, still looking a bit like he wasn’t entirely sure what he was seeing. He was streaked with dirt, and with blood.
“Hey,” Jack said, and reached out, very slowly, to unwrap resisting fingers from around the shard of metal, which turned out to be thin and cobalt blue and dangerously jagged along the edges. Jack thought it probably used to be a car door. “How much of this is yours?”
Daniel didn’t answer. He reached up to scrub at his face with his hands, and then stilled and left them there, heels of his palm pressed into his eyes. “I thought -”
“Daniel.” A little too loud, a bit over sharp. Daniel always needed an edge when he was shocky, the way that some people needed orders and others needed kid gloves - someone outside of his head to argue with. “Were you in the explosion?”
“No.” And then, detached and perfectly clear from behind his arms, “Sam’s not answering her phone.”
Jack sucked in a breath, took a second, put that away, and looked again. Daniel was streaked with dirt and blood but was mostly intact underneath. One cut high on his forehead, a thin line low on his neck, almost a scratch, but his hands and forearms were torn all to hell. The cuts on his right palm were the deepest, where the edge of the car-door-cum-dagger had bit in. He was missing a few fingernails.
Jack started the mental inventory. Water. Bandages. Antibacterials. Pain killers wouldn’t be bad, either.
“How long have you been digging?” he asked, but Daniel wasn’t listening.
Daniel stared back up at the sky, and for a moment Jack thought he was slipping out of it again. “Daniel -” he started to snap.
But Daniel reached out and muffled the sound beneath his palm, pressing his hand across Jack’s face as Jack had just done a minute before. Not ten seconds after the distant roar got very loud, very fast. They duck beneath the toppled lamppost and a large piece of asphalt that had been ripped up and stuck out from the ground at a weird angle, and pair of death gliders circled the sky where the top of Cheyenne Mountain should be.
“The mothership moved on, but there are still patrols every once in a while.” Daniel breathed the words into the space by Jack’s ear. Jack nodded, and waited for the gliders to pass, and ignored the taste copper and dust on his lips.
--
Another abandoned story-that-wasn't for apocalypse_kree, this time for a prompt that I didn't even claim -- which is good, since, abandoned. If you're sensing that apocafic problems are a theme for me this time, you would be correct.
--
Daniel forces himself to look until he can’t keep his eyes open anymore. Then they slide shut. He thinks, finally.
Daniel opens his eyes. Everything is cool and blue. He can’t feel anything, not even the familiar sense of his own limbs. But it’s cold, and that surprises him; he doesn’t remember it being cold, before. He thinks, huh. He closes his eyes.
Daniel opens his eyes. It’s still blue, and still cold, but there’s something else. He feels - heavy. As if, if he wanted to move - he doesn’t - it would be beyond him. He closes his eyes. He thinks, please, try to stay awake. He thinks, but I’m not sleeping. He keeps them closed.
Daniel’s eyes open. He looks uncomprehendingly at the featureless blue in front of him and tries to close his them again, but the movement won’t come; the blue resolves itself into a wall, laced with veins of rock and glowing crystal. He thinks, not what I was expecting, and then realizes too late what he’s looking at and thinks that he’s going to be sick.
He thinks, lay still, you’re not strong enough for much exertion, yet, and then he rolls suddenly off the platform and falls to the floor, where he is sick, all over the smooth stone.
Or do that, he thinks. No, he doesn’t. “Please let me have gone crazy.” In the small, silent room, the murmur is inordinately loud and echoes in his ears, and there’s a moment where Daniel almost thinks he’s about to get very lucky.
But then the voice in his head that doesn’t belong to him says breath deeply, the nausea should pass.
“No,” Daniel says. And then, clinging to the edge of the platform, pulling himself gracelessly to his knees, again, louder, “No.”
Try to stay calm, you’re still -
He realizes for the first time that his BDUs are gone, replaced by clothing that’s shapeless and off-white and reminds him vaguely of hospital scrubs.
- weak, I haven’t finished -
Everything starts to tip just a little off-center, and Daniel has to dig his fingernails in to keep his grip on the platform. Even it doesn’t feel steady. It’s not supposed to be like this. There was… he remembers a room. Not like this one. Darker, and warmer; someone else’s breath, faint on his shoulder. This is wrong. He doesn’t -
- oh, please don’t -
Daniel’s eyes close. He doesn’t feel it when he hits the floor.
When Daniel next wakes up, the disorientation only lasts a moment before everything rushes back. He’s on the platform again, exactly as he’d been before. The floor’s been cleaned. There’s some vertigo when he pushes himself up until he’s sitting with his legs over the side, but not nearly as much as there had been before, and what little there is passes quickly.
Daniel looks down at his hands and forces himself to silently count to some very high numbers in some very difficult languages, and the inside of his head is otherwise very, very quiet for a long time.
Time passes. He’s not sure how much - but he’s not sure what language he’s on anymore, either, and it usually takes him a while to lose track like that. His headache is gone; he’s not dizzy. He feels… normal. In control of himself.
“Okay,” he finally says. “Now we can’t talk.”
There’s a pause, and then, running through his mind like words read off a page, It’s not necessary for you to speak aloud.
Interesting, Daniel thinks, although he has no idea if it’s a thought he’s kept to himself or not. So this is what it’s like. “I’d prefer it, for now, if you don’t mind.”
It is possible to isolate your thoughts, says the other, but it takes a conscious effort and a knowledge of how to accomplish it. Most of my thoughts are closed to you now. I’m sure you’d find the alternative unpleasant, at the moment.
“I’m finding a lot of things unpleasant lately,” says Daniel.
--
Apparently at some point I was planning to put an apocalypse in there.
Aaand, a piece of something or other I was playing with for paian's Next Steps verse (See? Blame everyone on Komos), because she very kindly said people could play and no one did, which is just a travesty. A travesty I assisted, because neither did I. This would have been a story called 'Things They Don't Teach You In Basic' and would have had section headers like 'gruel: it's what's for dinner. and breakfast. and lunch.' and 'getting thrown in jail is easy; getting out, slightly less so.' and have had lots of off-world exploration and wacky hijinx and fun with Cassie. If I had written it. Which I didn't.
--
It takes her a few days to figure it out, and after that Cassie is mildly disturbed to realize that the commanders are spending the three-week training run trading personnel like baseball cards. It’s not exactly how she imagined team assignments would work. It does sound like Jack, though.
Day one, she’s with Puigh, a marine who doesn’t seem to speak, and three civilians, out in the middle of the woods chasing down another team. War games, allegedly, but after a couple of hours she’s pretty sure the point was to deliberately get them completely lost. They find their way back before the dinner call, but Puigh puts all four of them back into the pool.
Days two, three, and four. Colonel Ramirez isn’t bad, but there’s another lieutenant in the group, about the same age as Cassie, Army instead of Air Force but basically the same cultural and diplomacy training that Cassie’s had. Nice guy. Eventually, he stays, she goes. Ramirez swaps her for a field medic.
Days five and six. Cassie and Scott Pressman smile through gritted teeth and very politely go through exercises and try to pretend they don’t remember all the shit they both gave each other for years at the Academy, and then both ask to be traded within twenty minutes of one another. Pressman goes to Puigh, Cassie goes to Lieutenant Colonel Michalski, and everyone goes to bed happy.
Day seven. They’re supposed to be running an invasion scenario. Cassie’s group is on the offensive, and don't seem about to get too worked up over the whole thing. No one’s been traded in three days. “Captain Emma Zhao, demolitions,” says the tiniest woman Cassie has ever seen in her life, snapping her gun and leaning against a tree, and then, “Let’s blow up one of the empty tents.”
“Yeah, I think the colonel might have a problem with that,” says Michalski.
Zhao shrugs. “Creating a strategic diversion.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. Guys?”
Birnbaum looks down at the distant encampment for a long time. “It’s all gravel and uphill. Sneaking anywhere is gonna be a real pain in the ass.”
Cassie glances over at West, who seems fairly content to leave the strategizing to everyone else, and is rechecking his kit. She’d know the medic patch from a hundred paces. “We could fake an injury,” she says. Everyone looks at her. “On the gravel. Have Captain West bring them up to camp and pretend to break scenario.”
“What, and foothold it?” asks Zhao.
Birnbaum fowns. “I dunno, who’s commanding the other team? Would they go for it?”
Cassie and West check eyeball each other for a minute, and then he shrugs minutely, and she says, “Everyone trusts the doctor.”
Michalski gives them both a long look, and squints down at the camp, and scrubs thoughtfully at his hair. “It’s Pierce’s team. He’d go for it.”
They send West and Birnbaum, because everyone trusts the doctor and nobody blinks when a civilian does dumb shit like trip over a root and sprain something. That only flies because no one on Pierce’s team knows that Birnbaum had a year at the SGC, but it flies. Cassie spends lunch guarding the prisoners and eating MREs with Zhao.
Day eight, Michalski. Same scenario, defense. Day nine, Michalski. She and West have to deal with a bunch of “natives” babbling in another language and refusing medical treatment to plague victims. Days ten and eleven, Michalski, overnight in some cave.
Day twelve, Michalski submits his team roster, and they all play basketball.
--
Okay! Clean house. New stuff for 2008. That is not bad apocafic. I really hope.
Anyway. This one happened -- I think -- after some chatter in someone else's journal about the SGC being haunted. I want to say it was paian, and not just because I tend to blame everything on her, as she's a sneaky little enabler. (ps, Komos, remind me to post pictures of those cookies.) It also has to have the crackiest OC I've written in any fandom, ever. Not the crackiest scenario, but up there. Just, cracky, in general.
--
The first time they actually meet, he feels it immediately, the first time he goes back to the SGC, an indistinct feeling of another somewhere very nearby. Not Oma, Daniel’s learned what she feels like, knows it without thinking, but there is a sense of likeness that piques his interest. He waits as Jack and Sam and Teal’c step into the elevator and rise towards the surface, as General Hammond turns to make his way down the corridor, and then lets himself drift without intent. The other will find him, if they want to.
And she does. He’s not too far from the elevator switch when the presence blooms beside him and he can feel the other reaching towards him. Daniel’s not very good at sensing yet - he still misses a good half of what Oma sends him and he’s used to her - and so he falls back to what he started with and projects a body. Soon after the other detangles slightly and does the same, and suddenly Daniel is standing in a hallway of the SGC with the illusion of a girl, maybe 10, in a red sundress and high-tops, as airmen pass through them without notice.
“Not bad,” she says, looking him over. “Little fuzzy around the edges, though.”
He knows. Oma doesn’t particularly encourage projecting, and he’s had to practice on his own. “...Thanks?”
She grins, sends a flash of amusement back at the confusion he’s not quite able to block. “Sorry. I’m Poe.”
“Daniel,” he says, and she just smiles, flickers the impression of waiting, and when the penny drops Daniel is distracted enough that he briefly loses hold on the projection, has to refocus to smooth it out again. “Poe as in….”
“That’s me.” More amusement, a vague gesture towards the floor. “I’m not usually up this high, but I felt you around. Wasn’t expecting you’d be back so soon, by the way.”
“I’m - confused.”
“Yes, I’m getting that.”
He blinks at her, reflexively moves out of the path of a member of SG-11 on his way past. “You’re the ghost on 13.”
“Well, not a ghost. And I’m not actually on level 13 that often, although as I understand it there’s some kind of dogmatic significance to the number?”
“Uh, a superstition.” Daniel hesitates, cautiously reaches out to see if he’s missing something, but all she’s giving is the same sense of something like mirth and the projection of a sly smile. “Can I ask why?”
Poe shrugs. “Actually, now that you’re one of us, no reason, really.”
Now that he… “You were watching me?”
“Well, not all the time. I like the - security monitoring station? Yes. Nice men.” She must pick up on the wave of irritation that slips out, because she sighs, or - no, just gives the feel of one. “I owed a favor.”
“To Oma?”
“She had an interest,” Poe says. And it’s weird, it’s still very weird, but if that’s the case Daniel supposes he can’t exactly complain about the…observation. All things considering. Poe appears to lean back against the wall, looks on almost fondly as a few of the infirmary staff wait for the elevator. “I’ve rather enjoyed myself, actually. Never been to this planet before. I think I might stay a little longer.”
The last time they actually meet it’s in Jack’s office and she’s being absolutely no help at all. “I think your nose is crooked,” she says, lurking in the corner. Daniel ignores her. (He has to ignore pretty much everything unless he wants to come out missing something vital. Like, say, his memory.) “Honestly, that’s not where I remember it being.”
He loses his hold and everything unravels. If there’s a trick to this descension thing, he can’t figure it out. “Don’t you have some hallway you’re supposed to be screwing with the temperature in?”
“Jesus, chill.”
“You are spending way too much time here.” Between the waffles and Poe, who’s spent a considerable portion of the last hour humming something disturbingly rock & rollish, Daniel is starting to suspect that there’s something viral about the SGC and American pop culture. Corrupting higher planes one ascended being at a time; he wonders if this is all somehow his fault. “You know, I don’t get it. Oma leads you to complete enlightenment and you do is haunt the SGC.”
“Backatcha,” she says. “And anyway, if Oma’s out of the game, someone has to keep an eye on things around here.” Her presence starts to drift off, then returns, briefly. “Project what you’re going for first and fill it out from there.” And then Poe’s gone, presumably up to play with someone’s computer monitor or rescue some lost car keys, as usual.
Her advice works, except later Daniel is pretty sure he was projecting with clothes on.
After that they never speak again, although Daniel does notice a significant increase in the amount of random objects that go spontaneously missing from his office or his locker, only to reappear somewhere else entirely a week later. And random audio files on his computer play as ‘All Along the Watchtower’ for years.
--
Opening to an attempt at an apocalpyse_kree fic that didn't end up going anywhere.
--
The first time Jack saw Daniel, it was in a field of rubble and twisted metal that used to be a parking lot, and it was long before Daniel saw him. Daniel saw kneeling beside the twisted column of a light post and staring up at the sky in profile, and Jack moved towards him in near silence. The sky was near silent too, cut only with a faint underlying roar, far off, like a passing jet. There were no sirens. Jack thought there should be sirens.
There was no ship, either, and Daniel stared up at perfect, puffy white clouds and didn’t move.
Jack was almost on top of him, just about within arms reach, just about to whisper for him, when Daniel turned and lunged at Jack with a piece of something in his hand that glinted in the sun. He was overbalanced, though, and missed even as Jack snapped a hand out to deflect the hit, and they both went toppling over into the dust. Something nearby fell with them, and pebbles and small bits of debris rained down and scattered.
It was too easy for Jack to pin him, to get a hand over his mouth; he waited until the wild stare softened into recognition, and then eased off and sat back, slowly. Daniel sat up slowly, still looking a bit like he wasn’t entirely sure what he was seeing. He was streaked with dirt, and with blood.
“Hey,” Jack said, and reached out, very slowly, to unwrap resisting fingers from around the shard of metal, which turned out to be thin and cobalt blue and dangerously jagged along the edges. Jack thought it probably used to be a car door. “How much of this is yours?”
Daniel didn’t answer. He reached up to scrub at his face with his hands, and then stilled and left them there, heels of his palm pressed into his eyes. “I thought -”
“Daniel.” A little too loud, a bit over sharp. Daniel always needed an edge when he was shocky, the way that some people needed orders and others needed kid gloves - someone outside of his head to argue with. “Were you in the explosion?”
“No.” And then, detached and perfectly clear from behind his arms, “Sam’s not answering her phone.”
Jack sucked in a breath, took a second, put that away, and looked again. Daniel was streaked with dirt and blood but was mostly intact underneath. One cut high on his forehead, a thin line low on his neck, almost a scratch, but his hands and forearms were torn all to hell. The cuts on his right palm were the deepest, where the edge of the car-door-cum-dagger had bit in. He was missing a few fingernails.
Jack started the mental inventory. Water. Bandages. Antibacterials. Pain killers wouldn’t be bad, either.
“How long have you been digging?” he asked, but Daniel wasn’t listening.
Daniel stared back up at the sky, and for a moment Jack thought he was slipping out of it again. “Daniel -” he started to snap.
But Daniel reached out and muffled the sound beneath his palm, pressing his hand across Jack’s face as Jack had just done a minute before. Not ten seconds after the distant roar got very loud, very fast. They duck beneath the toppled lamppost and a large piece of asphalt that had been ripped up and stuck out from the ground at a weird angle, and pair of death gliders circled the sky where the top of Cheyenne Mountain should be.
“The mothership moved on, but there are still patrols every once in a while.” Daniel breathed the words into the space by Jack’s ear. Jack nodded, and waited for the gliders to pass, and ignored the taste copper and dust on his lips.
--
Another abandoned story-that-wasn't for apocalypse_kree, this time for a prompt that I didn't even claim -- which is good, since, abandoned. If you're sensing that apocafic problems are a theme for me this time, you would be correct.
--
Daniel forces himself to look until he can’t keep his eyes open anymore. Then they slide shut. He thinks, finally.
Daniel opens his eyes. Everything is cool and blue. He can’t feel anything, not even the familiar sense of his own limbs. But it’s cold, and that surprises him; he doesn’t remember it being cold, before. He thinks, huh. He closes his eyes.
Daniel opens his eyes. It’s still blue, and still cold, but there’s something else. He feels - heavy. As if, if he wanted to move - he doesn’t - it would be beyond him. He closes his eyes. He thinks, please, try to stay awake. He thinks, but I’m not sleeping. He keeps them closed.
Daniel’s eyes open. He looks uncomprehendingly at the featureless blue in front of him and tries to close his them again, but the movement won’t come; the blue resolves itself into a wall, laced with veins of rock and glowing crystal. He thinks, not what I was expecting, and then realizes too late what he’s looking at and thinks that he’s going to be sick.
He thinks, lay still, you’re not strong enough for much exertion, yet, and then he rolls suddenly off the platform and falls to the floor, where he is sick, all over the smooth stone.
Or do that, he thinks. No, he doesn’t. “Please let me have gone crazy.” In the small, silent room, the murmur is inordinately loud and echoes in his ears, and there’s a moment where Daniel almost thinks he’s about to get very lucky.
But then the voice in his head that doesn’t belong to him says breath deeply, the nausea should pass.
“No,” Daniel says. And then, clinging to the edge of the platform, pulling himself gracelessly to his knees, again, louder, “No.”
Try to stay calm, you’re still -
He realizes for the first time that his BDUs are gone, replaced by clothing that’s shapeless and off-white and reminds him vaguely of hospital scrubs.
- weak, I haven’t finished -
Everything starts to tip just a little off-center, and Daniel has to dig his fingernails in to keep his grip on the platform. Even it doesn’t feel steady. It’s not supposed to be like this. There was… he remembers a room. Not like this one. Darker, and warmer; someone else’s breath, faint on his shoulder. This is wrong. He doesn’t -
- oh, please don’t -
Daniel’s eyes close. He doesn’t feel it when he hits the floor.
When Daniel next wakes up, the disorientation only lasts a moment before everything rushes back. He’s on the platform again, exactly as he’d been before. The floor’s been cleaned. There’s some vertigo when he pushes himself up until he’s sitting with his legs over the side, but not nearly as much as there had been before, and what little there is passes quickly.
Daniel looks down at his hands and forces himself to silently count to some very high numbers in some very difficult languages, and the inside of his head is otherwise very, very quiet for a long time.
Time passes. He’s not sure how much - but he’s not sure what language he’s on anymore, either, and it usually takes him a while to lose track like that. His headache is gone; he’s not dizzy. He feels… normal. In control of himself.
“Okay,” he finally says. “Now we can’t talk.”
There’s a pause, and then, running through his mind like words read off a page, It’s not necessary for you to speak aloud.
Interesting, Daniel thinks, although he has no idea if it’s a thought he’s kept to himself or not. So this is what it’s like. “I’d prefer it, for now, if you don’t mind.”
It is possible to isolate your thoughts, says the other, but it takes a conscious effort and a knowledge of how to accomplish it. Most of my thoughts are closed to you now. I’m sure you’d find the alternative unpleasant, at the moment.
“I’m finding a lot of things unpleasant lately,” says Daniel.
--
Apparently at some point I was planning to put an apocalypse in there.
Aaand, a piece of something or other I was playing with for paian's Next Steps verse (See? Blame everyone on Komos), because she very kindly said people could play and no one did, which is just a travesty. A travesty I assisted, because neither did I. This would have been a story called 'Things They Don't Teach You In Basic' and would have had section headers like 'gruel: it's what's for dinner. and breakfast. and lunch.' and 'getting thrown in jail is easy; getting out, slightly less so.' and have had lots of off-world exploration and wacky hijinx and fun with Cassie. If I had written it. Which I didn't.
--
It takes her a few days to figure it out, and after that Cassie is mildly disturbed to realize that the commanders are spending the three-week training run trading personnel like baseball cards. It’s not exactly how she imagined team assignments would work. It does sound like Jack, though.
Day one, she’s with Puigh, a marine who doesn’t seem to speak, and three civilians, out in the middle of the woods chasing down another team. War games, allegedly, but after a couple of hours she’s pretty sure the point was to deliberately get them completely lost. They find their way back before the dinner call, but Puigh puts all four of them back into the pool.
Days two, three, and four. Colonel Ramirez isn’t bad, but there’s another lieutenant in the group, about the same age as Cassie, Army instead of Air Force but basically the same cultural and diplomacy training that Cassie’s had. Nice guy. Eventually, he stays, she goes. Ramirez swaps her for a field medic.
Days five and six. Cassie and Scott Pressman smile through gritted teeth and very politely go through exercises and try to pretend they don’t remember all the shit they both gave each other for years at the Academy, and then both ask to be traded within twenty minutes of one another. Pressman goes to Puigh, Cassie goes to Lieutenant Colonel Michalski, and everyone goes to bed happy.
Day seven. They’re supposed to be running an invasion scenario. Cassie’s group is on the offensive, and don't seem about to get too worked up over the whole thing. No one’s been traded in three days. “Captain Emma Zhao, demolitions,” says the tiniest woman Cassie has ever seen in her life, snapping her gun and leaning against a tree, and then, “Let’s blow up one of the empty tents.”
“Yeah, I think the colonel might have a problem with that,” says Michalski.
Zhao shrugs. “Creating a strategic diversion.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. Guys?”
Birnbaum looks down at the distant encampment for a long time. “It’s all gravel and uphill. Sneaking anywhere is gonna be a real pain in the ass.”
Cassie glances over at West, who seems fairly content to leave the strategizing to everyone else, and is rechecking his kit. She’d know the medic patch from a hundred paces. “We could fake an injury,” she says. Everyone looks at her. “On the gravel. Have Captain West bring them up to camp and pretend to break scenario.”
“What, and foothold it?” asks Zhao.
Birnbaum fowns. “I dunno, who’s commanding the other team? Would they go for it?”
Cassie and West check eyeball each other for a minute, and then he shrugs minutely, and she says, “Everyone trusts the doctor.”
Michalski gives them both a long look, and squints down at the camp, and scrubs thoughtfully at his hair. “It’s Pierce’s team. He’d go for it.”
They send West and Birnbaum, because everyone trusts the doctor and nobody blinks when a civilian does dumb shit like trip over a root and sprain something. That only flies because no one on Pierce’s team knows that Birnbaum had a year at the SGC, but it flies. Cassie spends lunch guarding the prisoners and eating MREs with Zhao.
Day eight, Michalski. Same scenario, defense. Day nine, Michalski. She and West have to deal with a bunch of “natives” babbling in another language and refusing medical treatment to plague victims. Days ten and eleven, Michalski, overnight in some cave.
Day twelve, Michalski submits his team roster, and they all play basketball.
--
Okay! Clean house. New stuff for 2008. That is not bad apocafic. I really hope.