(Untitled)

[notthesinger]

Alan awkwardly wrestles the front door open, both arms full of shopping bags.

"Maria!" he calls, in case she's back from Sarah Jane's. "Could you come help me bring in the shopping?"

Then he looks up.

". . . Maria?"

[Tiny tag: Alan Jackson]

[OOC: Taggable till it falls off the front page, and doubly so if you are a canon-mate. *g*]

Comments

[not_on_her_own]

Maria finds it hard to keep track of time in this place, and even harder keeping track of it out of this place. That is, she can't recall whether it's been a week, or longer, since she's been here last. It feels longer, but maybe because she just loves it here so much.

What's more important is that she's here, now, and has been enjoying a chocolate milkshake in a corner booth while taking a break from studies. The voice she hears calling her name is unmistakable. Instantly, she lets the straw fall away from her mouth and looks up, seeing her dad. Her dad, in Milliways.

"Dad?" She calls loudly, wondering if he can hear her over the din of the bar crowd.

[notthesinger]

Alan could hear his daughter's voice a mile away in a hurricane. He turns immediately to look in the direction it's coming from.

"Maria!" he calls, hurrying over, bags of shopping he's holding entirely forgotten. She looks all right - surprised, but not upset or distressed, which goes a long way toward calming Alan's own considerable anxiety at finding a restaurant in his front hall. This is clearly an alien thing, and Alan may be the father, but Maria still knows more about these things than he does.

"What's going on?" he asks when he reaches her. "What is this place?"

[not_on_her_own]

She pushes the glass away completely, then stands up, looking at him with an expression that's a mixture of surprise, delight, and worry. She's been here long enough to know that people come in from different times, so she wonders how much he knows about aliens already. If he's coming from her time, it won't be quite as hard to take in. So she treads carefully. Plus, she's not sure what he'll think about her being in a bar at the end of the universe.

"It's a...pub," she begins, uncertainly, looking away briefly, like she often does when she's fearful of reprimand. Her head ducks slightly, but then she looks back up at him. "At the end of the universe."

[notthesinger]

"A pub at the end of the universe," Alan repeats. He isn't sure which bit to start with first. A pub is a pub, regardless of where in the universe it's situated, but a pub that pops up in their home might need an approach other than the bog standard Disapproving Parent response. The alien stuff usually does. He settles for giving Maria the "I'm withholding judgement until I know more, but you'd best make it good" look.

[not_on_her_own]

Maria looks away again, trying to avert her gaze from the look. It doesn't help much, it never does. So after a few seconds pass in which she tries to think of a way to make it sound better, she finally half-smiles and says, "Yeah, but it's pretty safe..."

Well, mostly. And it's not as though she can get into much trouble. Bar would never let her drink alcohol, for instance.

"It's like this 'nexus,' I think someone said once. Kind of. Like, there are people here from different galaxies and times," she tells him. She might as well, he'll learn soon enough, and best to hear it from her.

But before she goes further, she's just happy that he's here, that she can finally talk to him about it. And it's that thought that causes her to reach out and hug him.

"Didn't think you'd find out this way," she smirks.

[notthesinger]

Alan sets a shopping bag down on the table to hug Maria back. A hug is, of course, a time-honored way to tip the scales when a parent hasn't decided whether to be angry or not, but Maria's never been like that. Alan is fairly certain he has the only teenage daughter on the planet - possibly on any planet - who hugs her father just because she wants to.

And he's starting to get a look at some of the other patrons.

Alan's been getting used to the feeling of being totally at sea lately. How many parents have to deal with this sort of thing on top of everything else?

So there's distinctly less of a wary edge to his voice when he says,

"Oh, how was I meant to find out then? How long have you been coming here?"

[not_on_her_own]

Maria pulls back a bit to look up at him. She really has to play this all very carefully. On the one hand, she doesn't want him to think she's been hiding things from him. On the other hand, however, she has been hiding things from him. All for good reasons, but she knows sometimes parents don't see it that way. Her dad, more than anything, would simply worry about her safety and well-being, in those instances when she was less than forthcoming with him.

"Well, not really long. Just a few months," she tries to lighten it a bit. Although really, when she's actually here, time has no meaning, so it's hard to determine how much time she's actually spent here. "I was going to tell you, it's just...would you have believed me? It's something you kinda have to see."

[notthesinger]

Alan can see her point. To a point. Before everything with Sarah Jane and Andrea Yates and the Graske, of course he wouldn't have believed in a pub at the end of the universe. If she had tried to tell him, in all seriousness, that she'd been visiting one, he would have made an appointment with a psychiatrist.

"All right," he says. "That gets you partly off the hook. But what about this past month? Anything else you haven't told me?" Because, really, if he can take her at her word when she claims he was turned to stone and he doesn't remember it, he can certainly accept this.

[not_on_her_own]

"Nope, nothing," Maria answers earnestly. She supposes there are some things that have happened at Milliways that she could mention to him, but those are more casual occurrences than anything else. Well, not casual, per se; the unusual seems ordinary to her, nowadays, so she supposes she's not the best judge sometimes of what is pertinent information, and what just seems completely normal. But, really, now that he's here, she thinks he'll find out soon enough about all the strange goings-on in this place, and it's much easier to simply experience that stuff, than to try and explain it.

"I could tell you more about Milliways," she says, almost eager. She feels proud to be the one educating him about something this time around. "Time stops here, so no one will be thinking you're missing back home or anything. And you can get any kind of food or drink you want."

That last part? She likes that.

[notthesinger]

It's Maria's enthusiasm that gets him. Whatever this place is, she clearly loves it, which tells him good things have happened here. And with the life they lead sometimes these days, a place where good things happen isn't to be sneezed at. They can sort out what she should have told him when later on, at home.

Alan smiles and sets down the other shopping bag. "How about a tour, then?" he asks.

[not_on_her_own]

Maria grins wider at that, looking around and trying to decide where to start first. The Observation Window catches her eye, and since it seems like the most appropriate start to any respectable tour of Milliways, she takes her dad's hand and leads him through the crowd of patrons.

"That's the Observation Window. You can see the universe ending, front row seats."

Not usually the type of thing to grin about, she supposes, but then it's not usually the type of thing anyone has the chance to see up close. Not without being hurt, at least.

[notthesinger]

Alan looks out the window and blinks hard, several times. He won't be able to describe it later; his brain can't seem to quite translate what his eyes are seeing, settling instead on offering up a sort of metaphor that doesn't quite make sense, either.

He looks at it for a few seconds, then looks away, back at Maria. "So it's literally a pub at the end of the universe, then," he says a bit weakly. "How does that work?"

[not_on_her_own]

Even though she's seen it many times, Maria still watches it with a look of awe on her face. Then her lips purse in thought at her dad's question. "I don't know. Luke's been trying to figure it out a bit, you know, how this place can exist at all. Temporal...mechanics, quantum theories...something like that. Best just getting used to it being here. Really, trying to figure it out? Major headache."

[notthesinger]

"Yes, I would imagine." Alan glances at the window again, but his gaze doesn't linger this time. The end of the universe. Not something he cares to dwell on. He catches the wonder on Maria's face and wishes he could see it through her eyes.

"If Luke can't figure it out, I don't see that the rest of us have much hope." Then he catches up. "Luke's been here, too? Am I the last in the neighborhood?"

[not_on_her_own]

Maria smirks, shaking her head. Slowly, she starts to lead him away from the window. There's a lot to see outside, too, although she's probably spent more time in here than anywhere else.

"Nope, Clyde hasn't been 'round," Maria almost laughs, imagining Milliways as the local hotspot now, with only Clyde left out of the loop. "And Sarah Jane hasn't, either. Well, not our Sarah Jane. She's still Sarah Jane, but she's...different. The one here is married to James Bond."

[notthesinger]

"I'm sorry, to who?" Alan looks at his daughter with surprise, the his eyes narrow slightly. "You're having me on now, aren't you?" James Bond. He'd devoured Fleming's novels as a teenager, though he couldn't remember much from them anymore. He's always meant to reread them, but there never seems to be time.