Who: Daniel Morgan & Zane Rosen What: Plagued by bad dreams, Daniel & Zane discover an unusual connection between them Where: Daniel's room in Camelot When: Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, August 19th 2017 Warnings: TBD, but probably not many
It had been a week since Walt's death. The funeral service was on Sunday, and for the past few nights at least, Daniel hadn't been sleeping very well. He should have been used to it by now, the strange dreams that often plagued him on any given night, for no reason in particular other than as a symptom of being Morgaine. The dreams he had weren't always prophetic, sometimes they were just his and Morgaine's memories mixed in with all the possible paths they could have taken, but before this week, they'd never been so present in his subconscious that it had Daniel actually tossing and turning all night, occasionally even talking in his sleep. For once, his dreams didn't have much to do with Morgaine, except for the occasional spark of something Other over the course of the night as Daniel slept, but for the most part, this was all Daniel. His thoughts, and his memories, all twisted and tied up together in the often mysterious, abstract ways his mind interpreted the dreams he had.
Nobody could say Walt's death hadn't been a surprise. Maybe it should have been, considering the life he'd chosen. Perhaps it was because the threat of death for those affiliated with Camelot, especially in their family, was already so real that anything less than that barely hit Daniel's radar. When he thought about losing his loved ones, he was always afraid it was going to end like that. That their deaths would inevitably be casualties to this seemingly endless war in the reincarnate community, and Daniel would feel responsible, simply because he shared blood or a cause with them. People in Camelot and Daniel's family by affiliation were often such guaranteed targets for their enemies that he never actually considered it would be possible that any of them would meet their ends some other way. Even after he'd gotten that phone call from Lydia, Daniel had a hard time believing it was even real.
A routine drill, they'd said. Walt hadn't been risking his life out in the field, he'd been safe on his own base, when the unthinkable had happened. But wasn't that how it sometimes was? Just when you thought you couldn't possibly be safer, death came for you anyway. Apparently it was the result of a faulty mechanism. Phrases like that had gone in one ear and out the other all week, holding little to no meaning for Daniel. The only thing that mattered was that his younger brother was dead, and that his family had lost another one. Not by Resistance hands, not as the result of some connection to the organization that had now wiped out four members of his immediate family, but by some freak accident that Daniel could have neither prevented, or anticipated. That should have made it easier, but it was the hardest thing about this to accept. Walt was gone, and Daniel couldn't even blame himself.
Holding himself together for the family after Walt's death, and Camelot after the news about Charlie Archer broke earlier that week, it wasn't anything Daniel wasn't already used to. He and Morgaine had long grown accustomed to carrying the weight of others, as well as themselves, but this was different. This had nothing to do with fate, or Camelot. This had happened by chance. Daniel didn't really know where to put everything he was feeling about his younger brother's death, because there was nothing to be done about it. No response, no acts of revenge, nothing. His death had been an accident, it had nothing to do with Camelot, so Daniel felt oddly... helpless, in a way that he wasn't actually used to. It didn't sit well with him, and resulted in a lot of restless dreams over the next handful of nights, in preparation and partial dread for Walt's service in just one day's time.
Tonight was another night like that. Almost violent tossing and turning while Daniel subconsciously battled his own guilt, occasionally dreaming of things that sometimes felt more like memories, except for some very key differences. In the dreams where his family were present, Walt was noticeably absent, and everyone kept asking where he was. At one point Daniel's mother, long deceased, actually appeared, looking like something more angelic than human and touched Daniel gently on the cheek, whispering something in his ear. The heavy feelings of guilt and sorrow and mourning washed over Daniel more completely while he slept, unable to distract himself from them like he did during the day when there were a million things still to take care of and no time to give into his grief. At some point during the night he turned over again in his sleep to face the wall, mumbling unintelligibly in a distressed tone under his breath.