InsaneJournal

Since she’d come on board the ship, Diana had found most of the people very welcoming. She wasn’t used to it. Though it was partly her own fault for pulling away, humanity tended to be very unwelcoming on the whole. It took conscious effort to put herself out there at first, though as the days passed she found it easier. It might just be she was a fish out of water again, or something about the people on the Enterprise just pulled out the best in her.

She moved with practiced grace and hidden power, but the view in the lounge made her steely eyes soften, just a little. It was easy to forget the past, when faced with the unending reaches of space.

Approaching the bar, she took a stool and looked for a menu.

Lucifer tended to keep track of new visitors who made their way to the lounge, but he definitely had not noticed Diana yet. He certainly would have known if he had. Walking up to her, he flashed her a smile and said, "Well, hello! What can I get you to drink?"

He sized the woman up, noting that she seemed to be doing the same with him, only she was far less obvious about it. "Lucifer Morningstar," he added, introducing himself. "And you are?"

She tilted her head, then offered him her hand. There was something about the way he carried himself that was unique and interesting. It marked him as potentially dangerous. At his name there was a flash of recognition. At least in her world, the devil was known. She’d studied just about every religious and ancient text she could in the 20s and 30s, trying to get a handle on the world.

But appearances were deceiving and he wasn’t locked up. “I’m Diana Prince. And what would you recommend? I’m feeling like I could use something strong.”

Arching an eyebrow, Lucifer shook Diana's outstretched hand. "Something strong?" He listed off the usual suspects, scotch, whiskey, gin and then a couple of alien liquors, leaving out the most potent ones he saved for himself and had locked away.

Waiting for her to make a decision, he watched her. She appeared unassuming, almost too much so. And there was something about their interaction so far that had left him unsettled, but he couldn't yet place it.

"I prefer scotch, myself," he offered.

"I'll try the Scotch then." Diana said. Her smile was briefly saddened - it reminded her of old friends, but she could attribute that to her recently acquired photograph.

"Have you been on board long? I seem to be far from alone, in being lost in time." She was curious. With a name like Morningstar, she wondered how much of the Devil he had in him. It didn't bother her or scare her. Few things could.

"The end of February," Lucifer answered, grabbing a glass and selecting a bottle of scotch, deliberately choosing one of his favorites. "It was actually January where I was, leaving Los Angeles for Vegas in 2017. I got here and thought I was in the hospital after a car accident, which would have been unfortunate. For the car."

When he'd first arrived, he hadn't even decided on his destination. Now he knew exactly where he'd gone and what had transpired after. "How about you?" He needed more details about her, the more the better.

Five months, that was a long time to be cooped up on a ship. Earth must have been welcome. "I see. I was at work. Rather I was leaving after a long day. A friend had sent me a gift, a photograph from a long time ago. It had brought back memories. So I wore my armor. And then I was here."

She smiled a broad expression. "Any car accident with me would also be bad for the car."

Any accident with me would also be bad for the car. That was an odd sentence and Lucifer fixated on it, trying to piece together what it meant, along with the weird feeling he had when it hit him as he slid Diana's glass over to her.

It was a minute detail, but he had felt the strength of her grip when they shook hands, a gesture that usually went unnoticed and even the most firm handshakes failed to resonate with him. Not hers. It didn't hurt, he had just felt it. "And why is that?" he asked, eyeing her cautiously.

In her old life, Diana had been careful about her identity, changing her birthdate every decade or so to maintain her cover as just an ordinary woman. She'd had some guidance in that thanks to an old friend.

This wasn't her old life, and there were others with unusual backgrounds like herself. Such as the literal devil. Her smile turned into a teasing grin, "My mother used to tell me that I was sculpted from clay and given life by Zeus. Which is a fancy way of saying my father was a god."

"Would you be willing to prove that?" Lucifer asked. "By hitting me? Not here, of course."

Bloody hell. Daughter of Zeus? He wouldn't have believed it if not for the fact that they were here so sure Zeus was actually real in one reality. And the handshake.

“Hitting you?” It reminded her of some men she’d met once, in the late 40s. They’d been quite into that sort of thing and one had actually paid her to hit him.

She’d donated the money to a war orphan relief charity. “I don’t want to hurt you. If I hit you wrong, you might have to get acquainted with sick bay.”

"Well maybe not at full force then?" Lucifer asked, amused. "I need to test a theory."

“So are we going to use the scientific method, or the hit things and see what happens method?” In all fairness, Diana didn’t often get to go toe to toe with anything. Doomsday had been a joy of a fight, but in the aftermath that joy had faded to sadness and loss.

Perhaps there was a message in that.

"Hit things and see what happens," Lucifer said. "Specifically hit me once, so I can see if it hurts. If you're a god... Half-god? Goddess? Anyway, you want to leave your drink, go hit me in the stockroom and then come back to it? This is a quick experiment."

He paused, "Or you could finish your drink and we could go to the gym. Take a bottle of scotch with us, maybe?"

He liked the idea of sparring someone who could actually hurt him, who he could fight back against.

Diana regarded him for a moment as a slow, sly grin spread across her face. “Okay. Bottle of scotch and the gym. And I will show you something there and you can ask yourself if you really want to do this.”

She was willing to believe that he could handle it like he said he did, but though a show of strength would be required, just to give him an idea of what she was capable of.

Lucifer nodded. "Deal," he said, grabbing a new bottle of scotch and then heading to the gym with Diana. "This is my second favorite place on this ship," he informed her. "Aside from the Lounge, of course."

Once in the gym, he regarded her curiously. "So what is it I need to witness?"

"Drinking and exercise. Not the usual combination that I've seen." Usually someone that relied too heavily on drink didn't have the time or energy to exercise. But everyone had their vices, and their coping mechanisms.

The jaded part of Diana had long ago drowned the part of her that chafed at the injustice. But maybe not all the way.

Smirking, she stepped around him, confidentialy walking to where the steel weights were. She lifted one marked 100kg (about 220 pounds) like it was a piece of paper. And then she folded it in half.

"Yes, well alcohol doesn't get me drunk," Lucifer said. "I drink it like water."

He watched as Diana lifted the weight, but then stared as she folded it. "Well," he said. "That's not supposed to do that. Also I won't tell if you don't, as that's destruction of Starfleet property." He'd just spent a night in the brig after all.

"So! I'm pretty sure this is going to hurt. Maybe avoid my face?" He just didn't want to bruise there.

Diana looked down at the weight, then glanced around and oh-so-casually bent it back into shape. It wasn't perfect, so she hid it under several others, then turned back to Lucifer. "If you're sure. I will hold back at first."

Unbuttoning her shirt, she shrugged out of it and set it aside. She was wearing a kind of sports bra, and she fell into a ready position with her fists raised and her muscles flexing.

"Right, just hit me already," Lucifer said, uncertain if he wanted to fight someone who could fold a weight in half and then flatten it back out. At least, not if he didn't want to end up looking like he had after his fight with Maze. "Just once."

Then he'd decide.

Diana nodded, approaching him. Her eyes darted down his chest as she gauged just where to throw the first punch. "I hope the Doctor is in. A light punch first."

She punched him lightly, an underhook shot to his stomach. It was a light punch for her, but probably felt like being hit by a world class heavyweight boxing champion at full strength.

It didn't feel quite that strong, given that Lucifer's own resistance was boosted by his divinity but he did feel it, and had to fight from doubling over, as he hadn't quite believed he needed to brace himself properly. "Right," he said. "You're a god or half-god and you can hurt me. Despite being from a world similar but not the same as mine. Experiment over! I should have brought the bloodwine rather than the scotch…"

He grinned, recovering most of the way from the blow. "That's impressive, by the way. I don't want to test out a full punch."

"I'm glad I held back. Though I think you can probably resist more than you think you can." She wondered how hard he could hit, or if it was just durability that was his strength and now ... strength.

"I have not tried the bloodwine yet, what’s it like?"

"It's strong, and I don't think it actually has blood in it, but it's strong enough to get me drunk," Lucifer replied. "Very few things are. Certainly not anything I ever had on earth."

He took a seat on a bench and opened the bottle of scotch, offering it to her first. "So, other than being able to beat the hell out of me, what else can you do?"

"Then I need to try that." It took a lot to get her drunk, she didn't have Lucifer's level of immunity, but she liked the idea of a quicker buzz. She took the bottle and took a very unlady-like swig. She'd spent time with soldiers, after all.

"Where to start....I have a lasso that can compel anyone to tell the truth?" She offered the bottle back.

Lucifer took a drink and grinned at Diana. "I don't lie," he mentioned. "So that lasso wouldn't bother me but I like the idea of it. I can think of at least one use for it."

It would be amusing, after all, getting his father to admit how manipulative he was. That there wasn't a way to win his stupid game. Just to hear it once.

Half the time a man said “I can think of a use for it” it was followed by something that made her want to hit them. But she didn’t think Lucifer was that kind of man, which was both amusing and sad commentary on his gender.

“I try not to use it for frivolous things. Though sometimes it’s tempting.”

"Is there anyone who you'd want to use it on?" Lucifer asked, curiously. "That you never got to?"

“Yes,” Diana answered. “But I wouldn’t have without his permission. Mostly I’d want to ask him a question. I want to know what his name is. I know the name he was born into, but I don’t think that’s the one he thinks of himself as. The Lasso would reveal that truth.”

"Right. That doesn't make any sense to me, but I guess that doesn't matter if you're overly cryptic." At least not yet. "Though you're the only person I've met on this ship who can hurt me so you'll have to be less cryptic in the future!"

“When a man spends his life consumed with something, I suspect he starts to believe he is that something, and the name he uses in normal life is almost like someone else.” Diana shrugged, and reached for the bottle again. “I can also jump very high. I’m working on flying.”

That made slightly more sense, and Lucifer nodded. But then she mentioned she was working on flying and he grinned. "I can fly," he mentioned. "I mean, by virtue of having wings. Not by jumping…"

“"Wings are cheating," Diana said, though her eyebrows rose to her hair line as she looked to see if she could actually see his wings.

Laughing, Lucifer did a full spin, and then flexed his wings out where they were visible, defying logic as he kept his shirt and blazer on. There were benefits to divinity, after all.

"I cut these off six years before I arrived here, and burned them about a year ago, but here they are, in full glory." His grin was wide, his eyes all but sparkling. There was something those wings had ignited in him upon their return that he hadn't quite figured out yet.

That his shirt was intact was something amazing to Diana. But not as amazing as the wings. She almost reached out to touch them. Almost. “It’s a bit like coming home? Or do you regret their return?”

"Oh I don't," Lucifer said, still beaming. "If I hadn't ended up here, maybe." He shrugged as the potential scenarios where he'd be upset about having his wings return were unimportant. He was on the Enterprise, and on the Enterprise he appreciated having his wings back.

"But it's nothing at all like going home." To either place.

“I believe that. No matter how long I’ve lived in Paris, or any other city, they don’t compare to Themyscira. I haven’t seen it in a hundred years.” Her last sight of the island had been her mother’s tear-stained face. It wasn’t a very good memory. “There have been times I regretted leaving. Times I searched for it to no avail. But I know I’ve done more good, than not, in leaving.”

"Themyscira?" Lucifer asked. He was curious as to what she was talking about and why she couldn't find it. "That's awfully selfless," he added, when she said she'd done more good than not by leaving.

“The home of the Amazons, where we were hidden away from the world, for the day when we would have to fight to defend it.” Diana stared into the bottle. “When Man’s wars found it, I was the only one willing to leave. And the only one able to do what needed to be done.”

"And so you did," Lucifer said. "You're better than I am."

He paused. "Which war was that?"

They weren't from the exact same universe, so it was a bit unnerving when she mentioned events that were eerily similar.

“They called it the war to end all wars.” At that, Diana took a long, deep drink from the bottle. “But it was the first of two great wars, and the start of a century of unrelenting warfare. The second one, the second one was when I gave up.”

She’d told Bruce it had been a century, but that had been an exaggeration. Though it sure felt like a hundred years.

"World War I and II?" Lucifer asked. He wasn't certain, and it was quite possible things had been different in her version of history but it sounded similar enough.

"I gave up on humanity a long time before that," he admitted. "War is nothing new. They'll always find reasons to fight. Which makes part of this place feel suspect."

Diana nodded, "Yes. At first, I thought it was Ares's influence. That he was making them fight. But all he was doing was just egging them on. After I killed him, nothing really changed. History marched on. They kept killing, in worse and worse ways, and in greater numbers. After the carnage of the second war, I became disillusioned. The camps, fire bombing civilian cities, nuclear weapons. I couldn't..."

She shook her head. "That's in the past."

Yeah, that was World War II.

"It's a lot easier if you don't care," Lucifer pointed out. Not that even he was always capable of that. Especially since he'd moved to Los Angeles. His default emotion had been anger and that had shifted.

"Next time we reminisce over the pitfalls of humanity we'll go for something stronger than scotch," he offered.

There’d been times she’d almost wanted to care, but between the horrors she’d seen, and watching most of her friends age and die, she’d made herself shut down. “I agree with you. Something harder, next time.”