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Allison was surprised when the door to her childhood bedroom opened, not on the cramped hallway of what was to an adult's eyes now obviously the cramped once staff's quarters of a derelict mansion, but on to that strange bar-place again.

She eyed the room, but she didn't see Klaus or Ben (the second thought of which quickened her heartbeat and her search of faces, though her expression had remained untouched). There was no look back when she decided to walk through and approach that strange bar she'd been introduced to initially. The quirk of an eyebrow, as she thrifted past the want for a whiskey and cigarette for something publicly acceptable.

"Coffee." Beat. "Please?"

Not quite sure how it worked and finding it as strange as fighting the Eiffel Tower as a child was normal. Inanimate objects with bizarre powers and designs of their own. Allison took the coffee when it appeared, settled her shoulders, and turned on her seat to look at ... the first crowd of people in years who weren't already looking at her with hungry or adoring eyes.

Tiny Tag: Number 00.03 | Allison Hargreeves

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Lup looks down from the bar and notices the look on the woman's face.

She knows that look.

"First time here?" she calls down, grinning.

Allison's gaze shifted at being addressed. From the throng of people, busy at all their little tables and booths, to the person the voice had come from. There's a note of the politeness, and the smile, but the continued lack of recognition.

"Second."

Her own smile slots in effortlessly.
Tilted at the corners. "Is it that obvious?"

Edited 2021-11-24 05:27 (UTC)

"I mean, it is kind of a lot to take in," Lup shrugs. "Pocket dimension connected to a bunch of different worlds, I mean. You get used to it."

She offers a friendly smile. "I'm Lup, by the way."

"Allison." The smile curves a little warmer.

"I'll have to take your word on it."

"I've been coming here a few years now." (At least, a few years on her side of the door.) "It's kind of nice to have a place you can go that never changes."

The want for a whiskey and a cigarette isn't, it turns out, unique to Allison: Ganymede has them himself, a few seats down from her and people-watching as well, back resting against the bar.

"Expecting a worse welcome?" he asks, making the gesture to the set of her shoulders, the way she sat on the barstool.

"No." Allison didn't pause reaching the face of the man, nor let her gaze linger on either of the parts he was indulging that she hadn't. There were rules. That was part of her job no matter where she found herself. She'd learned that the hard way far, far back in the beginning.

There was a nod back to everything else. "It's rather quiet."

"It is that, most of the time," he agrees easily enough, though he's not sure he's convinced. Not sure he has much in the way of swaying interest either way, but the collecting and discarding of little observations is just what one does when watching strangers.

You imagine little lives for them that may be entirely correct, or entirely not, or anywhere in between.

"But you eemed like you wanted to brace yourself before you turned around. Are you alright?"

That familiar old question. Even without the lights, and cameras, without a pad and a pen, it still glazes itself across her mind, even as her expression remained politely placidly. "Yes."

"Strange as it is, I think I'm grateful this place appeared when it did."

Allison isn't sure herself if that one is a lie. (The answer to that question categorically is; the sincerity of that question in her life is nil.) But. It is a bit much on the other side of the door. One morning in, and she might choose the bloodsucking journalists over the echoing Academy halls.

Edited 2021-11-24 06:02 (UTC)

"I think most people feel the same way about it, when it decides to appear. The days it isn't an annoyance, at least." Ganymede has felt both ways about the bar; sometimes he loves it (most times, really, and some of his closest friends have come from here) but as anything familiar is liable to do, it does at times get horribly in the way of plans.

Being locked in--or out--does that.

He puts out the cigarette and lets the fragrant smoke dissipate as he considers Allison. "How long have you been coming here?"

"This is my second time." She'd almost let herself believe it was just some bizarre dream. Had while she was awake. Standing up. But weird things happened in The Umbrella Academy, so many that were never reported in interviews or recorded in Vanya's book.

Allison lifted her coffee for a drink, blowing on it. "Why do you find it an annoyance sometimes?"

He shrugs gently. "Because sometimes I have other places to be, much as anyone else. Not lately, but it has interrupted me form a date or two in the past," Ganymede chuckles, flicking his thumbnail over the end of his cigarette, faintly fragrant, but not with the raw smell of burnt paper.

"So have you gotten over the shock of the first time?"

He hadn't, not by the second visit.

At least that didn't sound worrying.

"I do find it strange," Allison admitted, looking back over her shoulder. "But no, not as shocking as the first time."

If there was one thing their asshole of a 'father' trained them well at, it was surviving and acclimating on the fly, in the middle of fights that could demolish whole cities. With innocents lives on the line. Refusing to let shock, surprise, fear have any right to terrorize them any longer than the first wave of it breaking over them. At least those of them who had mastered their lessons, and Three had never given up in fighting for her place during that time.

If anything, it wasn't this place itself that had shocked her most.
It was Ben. And she'd take whatever this place dished out to see him again.

"You musthave a very strong constitution, then," Ganymede says. "That's good to see. do you mind if I ask you when you came in from? And perhaps your name, if you're inclined to give it."

That was one thing to call it, she supposed.
They weren't ever normal by anyone's definition.

'When' is part of that 'still strange,' but she answers without letting it pause her.

"2019, and Allison." It was so rare to have to tell anyone her name. For the need of an introduction that wasn't half-play between the beginning and ending business handshakes. The one who had always known who she was before them.

Maybe it would be nice when it stopped being surreal. "And yours?"

Ganymede is patient. He knows how jarring it can be to find yourself outside of any real possible place you could have imagined, with people who are strangers--and more compeltely so than you could describe.

"I'm a few years ahead of you, then," he says, reasonably, taking a drink from the glass only just beginning to sweat on the bartop. "It's almost winter for me, 2021. And I'm Ben," he adds. "Benjamin Prince."

"It's nice to meet you, Ben."

The irony of saying that name here, since seeing him, isn't lost on her. But there's no trip on the name. He's hardly the first Ben she's met since that horrible day, thirteen years ago. If anything, it's an incredibly common name. One of the far slighter sins of the world outside those now-decrepit walls.

"What's the longest gap you've found between your time one you've been told you?"

"Well..." he murmurs, pulling his long braid over one shouler and thoughtfully tugging on it as he thinks. "I suppose between me and Teja would be the longest, if we're counting backwards," Ganymede muses. "At least currently. He died in 552, and came in shortly thereafter."

It's been a while, to say the least. But he's never met anyone originally from farther back than himself: BC 4713 is quite a ways removed from most everyone else Ganymede has ever met, here or otherwise.

"Huh." Allison considered. Tried to at least.

Then. "Is there a version not counting backward?"

It's a question that better fits someone else. The semantics of math. Directional and linear and whatever terminology is out there for it. A thing that Three would never have bothered with. Another of those uncertain plagues upon the undercurrent of her thoughts, pushed hard behind closed doors that keep rattling, another reunion she's not sure she isn't relieved to be half-hiding in here from.

"If we're counting from when I was born and not when I live now, then yes," he says simply, shrugging.

"I've never met anyone close to when I was born."

It's on her to ask the question left open to that statement. The one that could have been easily said, but hadn't been. Left to hang there, either opened or skipped over entirely. But Allison Hargreeves is nothing if not immaculate at falling into roles laid in front of her. When she feels like it.

"Which was?"

She doesn't have to ask; plenty of people don't, and he never faults them for it. Sometimes the implication of how long it's been is enough to have people steering away, back to the mundanity of conversations in a bar.

"A very long time ago," he answers, as if he were commenting on the weather, or a particularly bland paint color; the careful evenness might be picked up, since she seems to have ease with the same habit. "BC 4713, give or take a year or two."

Calendar changes were a bitch.

Allison stares for a long moment. Her expression doesn't break apart into shock, and if anything, it's the pause that gives it away. The faintest knit between her brows. Something half dubious, still turning over the words of things told to her the first time and the way he says them. So carefully. At a distance.

Allison has topics she touches like that.
Or more aptly would so as not to touch them.

There's a brief calculus that relates more than she knows back to what she said earlier as she thrifts briefly for a response and then settles for something she thinks will not be in the expected box. "Then, you and I would have a far greater gap."

"Or, I suppose, whoever is the youngest person here." Still, she can't quite keep herself from looking over him. Turning over that fact. Whether she believes it. Even as skirts away from looking anything like one of her more wince-worthy fans of the last many years.

Ganymede's expression doesn't change from his patient calm; he's had worse reactions. She isn't laughing, or striking at him yet. To her expression she only smiles gently, expecting the disbelief and rejection already. He's used to it.

"To be fair, there is a great gap between me and nearly everyone else," he says softly. "I am quite old. And the youngest is still Egil, I believe. He's still a baby."

It's not gone. Not by the longest shot.

But. Adding to it now -- "There are children here?"

"Oh, yes. Quite a few, but they tend to come in waves. Egil is the only infant I know of lately," Ganymede explains.

"Have you never seen them here? Usually they're hard to miss," he chuckles.

A well-dressed man in an expensive three-piece suit makes his way to the bar and asks for a large whiskey.

He smiles at her, brightly,and says, "Hello."

He sounds British.
He looks like he is wearing eyeliner.
He's not. And he's not.

He catches Allison mid-sip of coffee, and so she has a finger up, finishing her swallow, which does give her that second to take the new guy in. He does indeed sound British, even though he looks one hundred percent LA, which goes together more than not in any number of places there.

"Sorry." A smile, setting her cup down. "Hello."

Edited 2021-11-25 00:45 (UTC)

He holds up a hand.
"Never apologise for finishing food and drink. Not on my account at least."

He smiles and leans on the counter.

"I love this place. It's great for people watching."

"Yeah?"

It's congenial enough.

She's not sure where he came from,
but she's still learning about this place, too.

"I'm Lucifer by the way. Lucifer Morningstar."

His smile is still bright and friendly.

Allison is not incredibly well-read -- that was always Luther and Ben -- but even Allison would have to have lost her brain not to recognize that name. She'd found every single one the classics boring, and being made to do memorization in Greek the worst, but she still had them in there.

"That's a name," is the response, with a faint tip of her cup toward him.

There's a teeny, tiny falter - and then his smile grows brightervstill.

"It is," he agrees. "But not to worry. I quit my old job."

Her brow knits, and the words are deliberately drawn out.

"Your old job."

"Ruler of Hell, " he supplies. Helpfully.

"Right."

Allison might be considering whether he's entirely off his rocker now.

This is not unusual for Lucifer so he handles it as he always does - by cheerfully ignoring it.

"Yes, I decided I needed a change. I've got a nightclub in L.A. now. That's much more my thing."

At least she was right about that,
making her wonder if this is some kind of insane improv.

It's the strangest cross, that chooses her words. "My home is in LA, too."

"Really?"
He sounds delighted.

"Does your L.A. has a LUX?"

"I'm uncertain. I don't get to spend much time in nightclubs."

Spending much of any time unplanned in public isn't a thing she does given the crowds it causes.

"Really? That's a shame. Going out clubbing can be lots of fun."

As far as he is concerned.

"I did when I was younger."

"Not so much since I became a mom." Or world famous.
That brought a whole other set of problems to motherhood.

None as great as herself, the little insidious voice in her head said.

He _stares_ at her.

And then he says, with feeling, "That's how to do it. Motherhood. Giving up things you enjoy for the sake of your children. Not just- pissing off and ignoring them."

Allison's therapist would probably be proud of how disturbed Allison looks at that. Just hearing someone else say it out loud drives it home how long she had made some choices just like that. But far more horrifically so.

"Please tell me you don't have kids."

"Me? Not at all. I did have awful parents though," Lucifer says, any and all hints passing way over his head.

"That's probably the best." Beat. "The first part."
Allison knows what it's like to have an awful parent.

And being one.

But even she knows better than that.

Others might take offence.
Lucifer - doesn't notice.

"Yeah,I'm not too keen on kids. They do tend to like me for some reason."

He shudders. Delicately.
Kids.
Urgh.

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