Backdated: Alexis and Lucifer WHO: Alexis Rose & Lucifer Morningstar WHAT: Not really an interrogation, at all WHEN: Backdated: Day 4, evening WHERE: The Wobbly Elm RATING: Low STATUS: Complete
Since arriving in the aptly named Schitt's Creek, Lucifer Morningstar had lost the one material possession he truly cared about, bedded his roommate, been accosted by Christmas carolers in the middle of the night, and found himself stabbed by the last person he'd deemed worthy of interrogating. All this while having a wardrobe that consisted of sweaters. So by the time he found himself at the bar, he was ready for a stiff drink or two.
Leaning back into the bar, he turned his head to tell the bartender, "Whiskey. Best you have."
His expectations were low.
Nor did he really expect to learn anything from this local resident he'd summoned to meet him, though he supposed he should look for her, even if he wasn't quite sure what she looked like. While his planning skills left much to be desired, he did have a backup plan that consisted of standing on the bar and calling her name.
If it came to that.
No need for shouting, not at this stage of the game. Alexis showed up, heading into the Wobbly Elm wearing skinny jeans and boots that climbed so high they should pay a toll, a cream, wool-blend turtleneck sweater the crowning glory. The bar was sketchy but she actually thought it charming in a weird way.
Probably because it was an actual dive bar, nothing hipster posing as such. A good dive bar left you feeling the slightest twinge of concern for personal safety. This place fit the bill - it even had one of those old, blinking schlitz sign out front and gin and tonics in oftentimes dirty glass for cheap prices, fake wood paneling, a questionable exterior that never answered the perpetual are they open/closed? question.
They were open, by the way.
“You must be Lucifer,” she greeted, settling into a stool beside him. Right, Lucifer - what a great, demonic name. “I’m Alexis. Bourbon,” she added to the bartender, wanting something a little bit liquid smoke and molasses.
"In the flesh," Lucifer responded, a smirk playing on his lips as he turned toward her, reaching for the glass now waiting for him. Constantine had the right of it, he was completely honest and upfront about who he was and no one seemed to ever want to believe him.
"I'm afraid proper interrogation is off the table, unless you happen to know how the lot of us arrived here and who's behind it?"
Proper interrogation? “What, you mean like waterboarding? Not into it,” Alexis blanched, tucking one knee over the other, and she thanked the bartender for her drink. If this bar was a little more hip, she would have channeled the spirit of the basic bitch and ordered a pumpkin spice white russian, but the Wobbly Elm wasn’t the type of establishment to indulge in such a thing.
“All I know is that a bunch of people came here straight from a haunted house,” she said, sipping from her glass. “Some arrived without having gone through that mess, like you,” here, a wave of her hand to indicate her tall, dark, and hellishly handsome companion. “I also don’t know who’s behind it - I think you have awhile before that answer becomes clear, so strap in.”
They never gave away the plot twist too early, right? Like. The Sixth Sense was ninety percent done before the ‘Bruce Willis is a ghost’ reveal shocked and awed.
"No, not like waterboarding. I gave up torture when I left hell," he replied as if that should be painfully obvious. "Well, for the most part, at least! Really I'd need the detective here with me in order to do the entire good cop, bad devil routine anyway."
Finally daring to take a sip, Lucifer had to admit he'd had worse. Of course, this was nowhere near the quality he'd come to appreciate at Lux. A shadow crossed over his features as he considered his home, and the people who probably thought he'd just deserted them again.
"I'd have done much better in a haunted house," he mused.
He downed the rest of the glass then signaled for a refill.
"So does this not phase you at all?"
Alexis was très curious what Hell was like (was it just a sauna?), but she figured she’d ask that question once it was her turn to do a little interrogating. “I mean, I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit and done a lot of crazy shit - why would it phase me?” she asked rhetorically. Mostly, she was kind of a go-with-the-flow type of person. Potentially, this whole thing was phasing David more (Ted mostly just tried not to think about it).
And besides, how was she ‘supposed’ to react? If people were going to judge her for not reacting in a way that met their standards, then they weren’t invited to the barn parties anyway.
“So, about Hell...” she cradled her glass in her hands. “Are there actually layers or is it more of a one-stop shop corporate kind of thing?”
Right, why would it phase her? Lucifer continued to watch the unfamiliar woman next to him for a moment before deciding that humans were far more capable of dealing with extreme circumstances than he'd previously given them credit for. Though that conclusion was partially due to the humans in his life. His therapist, for instance. Talk about seeing and doing a lot of crazy shit.
He felt a twinge of guilt, realizing he didn't know that Dr. Linda was alright, that he had no way of knowing if she would be, and it was his presence in her life that had put her at risk in the first place.
He was grateful for her next question, shifting his thoughts from his own guilt to that of others. "Oh no, that would be boring, wouldn't it? Everyone getting the same punishment no matter what they'd done? It's more of a choose your own adventure type deal. You decide what you feel most guilty about and then that's used against you for all eternity."
“Ooh, nice,” Alexis was impressed. Because most everyone felt guilty about something, didn’t they? She had her own issues, as she assumed others did too. “How do you end up in Hell? Is it like all the fundies say, like you have to worship Jesus and not show any knees when you wear skirts?”
That kind of life seemed boring. And if that was the determination for Heaven vs. Hell, then she was pretty sure she knew where she was going.
Whatever, she’d just throw a fabulous party there too. “I always thought Sky Daddy was kind of a farce anyway,” she mused, swallowing a mouthful of bourbon. “He’s supposed to love everyone but if you loved someone you wouldn’t let them walk out of the house with a mullet, for example.” Seemed simple enough to her.
About to answer the first of her questions, he was instead taken by her assessment of his father. "Right?" he agreed enthusiastically. "You're nothing but a game to him, much like all of us are here in this Canadian wasteland. Present company excluded, of course."
Glancing at the bartender whose hand was hovering over his refilled glass, Lucifer added, "Now come on, that includes you too."
“He probably has other things to do besides drag you here with other weirdos, huh?” Alexis guessed. She didn’t know the extent of the whole God-Devil relationship, but all those stories - including the fantastical fiction many misinterpreted and lived their lives by - said that it wasn’t great.
But yeah, it likely wasn’t good ol’ God behind this mess that had people from all over squished into one melting pot. Something else - whatever it was, it was beyond Alexis’ area of expertise. She knew how to negotiate in Arabic and handle herself around drug lords, but those were very specific skill sets. “It’s not so bad here, you know,” she shared, swirling the liquid in her glass a little. “I hated it at first too. It grows on you.”
She meant that. Schitt’s Creek was kind of a mish-mosh of a town, in the sense that every building was different, borrowing elements from different styles - kind of like a patchwork quilt, in a sense, a well-worn and loved one.
"Speaking of," Lucifer began, his words dripping with enthusiasm, "enough about me. Where are you from, if not here? And what exactly have you seen in life that all of us weirdos are just par for the course? What deep, dark secrets do you hold?"
“New York,” Alexis supplied and, well, she didn’t know if all the party bus people were considered par the course but she didn’t see a point in raising a stink about it either. Because obviously they were here for a reason and for who knew how long, right? “I was a child actor and model - so that kind of explains the things I’ve seen, while growing up. I didn’t have much of a traditional upbringing.”
Nothing that would appease the Bible-humpers, anyway. “I traveled all over the world and got myself into a lot of, um, tricky situations?” she shrugged. “But I also got myself out.” If there was one thing Alexis was proud of, it was her ability to be resourceful - though as of late, she had plenty of other reasons to be proud of herself too. She’d gotten her high school diploma and a college degree. Not to mention she’d learned a thing or two about herself as well - like how she was defined by the things she’d achieved and the love she had for others besides being defined by whichever man’s arm she was hanging off of.
"Impressive!" Lucifer replied. "Well, not the world of child actors… that seems like a fate worse than hell, but at least you can escape from it eventually. But I admire someone who can fix their own problems, get out of tight spots, that sort of thing. Comes in handy."
He was the sort that usually started off an attempt to fix an issue by escalating it rapidly, then calmly working his way through until everything was resolved. Of course, he usually had someone like Maze or the detective of Amenadiel there for assistance.
“Well, thanks - never thought I’d get a compliment from the Devil, but I guess it’s fitting,” Alexis winked, sitting up straighter and obviously preening at the praise. “Anything else you want to know, Lucifer? It wasn’t too bad of an interrogation.”
She was still alive. No waterboarding had occurred, nor had she ended up stuffed in the back of his pedobear van. And really, she didn’t mind answering questions to the best of her ability. This whole thing was weird for them all.
"Only everything," Lucifer answered easily. Now that she had his attention, it would be difficult to shake it without just getting up and leaving. "Where have you traveled? What sort of trouble did you find yourself in? Any directors or casting agents particularly in need of punishment once they wind up in my former realm? I do still have connections, after all."
The idea of directors or casting agents needing a swift kick in the pants by the devil made Alexis laugh. “I’ll let you know,” she grinned, changing her trajectory on drink orders and going for a vodka cranberry this time. It was her go-to, when she wasn’t sipping on hard seltzer with her former friends, meaning, the witch Klair and other pals that really just weren’t in her orbit anymore.
“But I’ve been everywhere - all around the world,” she shared. “From LA to Thailand to South Korea to Saudi Arabia. I’ve dated a sultan’s nephew, sweet talked secret police, bribed drug lords, and I have my license in seven different countries.”
When her drink arrived, she took a sip, ice tinkling in her glass. “By the way, super hard to parallel park in a burka. Just FYI.”
"And now you live here?" Lucifer replied incredulously. "Is this entire place a front for something more exciting?" That was certainly an idea worth entertaining if only for a moment until she corrected him.
Still, his respect for the woman sitting next to him grew. "And what about now? What do you do here in Schitt's Creek?" He emphasized the name, as it had so far provided him with plenty of amusement.
Alexis snorted a laugh into her drink. “Hardly a front,” she said, and she wouldn’t put on any airs about that - or try to make this town more exciting than it actually was. She liked living in Schitt’s Creek but it wasn’t a hotspot for espionage or hiding secrets. Everyone was pretty much an open book.
“My dad bought the town for my brother as a joke once. Back when we were rich and famous, then we lost all our money and had to move here because we had nowhere else to go. We’ve had a couple chances to leave - but it’s home now,” she admitted. That almost was weird to say.
"That's exactly how I feel about Los Angeles," Lucifer said earnestly. He didn't even blink at the idea of losing everything and ending up somewhere unintended maybe due to some firsthand experience. "Mazikeen used to give me a hard time about how life on earth was boring and how we didn't leave hell for her to be a bartender but things just sort of fell into place, didn't they?"
“That’s what they do, they fall into place,” Alexis agreed. She clinked her glass against Lucifer’s. “So here’s to that, and hopefully things fall into...a little better place for you soon?”
They’d all just have to be a weeeeeeeee tad more patient to uncover the answers they wanted, but that was okay. It was a good exercise in learning to be patient because some people? Not exactly masters of the craft.