She looks up from her drink and thinks, for a moment, that she's found her something happening; she's ready to step in if the girl looks like she needs help, but it blows over and away. The greatest moment of excitement happens when the other woman blows into the barstool next to her like a hurricane, before she orders her drink with surprising tenderness. 

Thalia smiles at her when she catches her looking. She doesn't have the glass-eyed fervor look of a fan, or hungry recognition in the lines of her face, so she figures it's just a simple "who is this person sitting next to me" glance. She likes that kind of glance. Her smile deepens into sincerity.

"Put her drink on my tab," she says, leaning slightly over the polished wood countertop to get the bartender's attention. She's just short enough that he probably can't make her out easily with the new person between them. Thalia looks back at aforementioned new person, this time looking serious.

"I'm sorry about them," she says. "This isn't usually that kind of place." 

Maybe she'll make sure they don't come back.

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Thalia snorts and raises her own glass of vodka as if to toast the other woman. 

"It's what we're all here for, right?"

She takes a sip, nose wrinkling only slightly, and swallows. Vodka isn't as good as whiskey for a burn that blazes down your throat, reminding you you're here and present and alive in your body, but it's better than nothing. Too bad the bourbon selection at this bar is shit, or she'd be drinking Angel's Envy. Someone sent her a bottle as a gift once, probably for the name, and it had actually turned out to be pretty good.

"Besides," she continues, a little more seriously, "You look like you could use a break."

The moment it's out of her mouth she wants to take it back. She means to be empathetic; she probably sounds tactless.

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The twist of shame that curls in her gut at the look on the woman's face after she speaks fades into amusement and a strange, hesitant bafflement. She plays nervously with a twist of hair for a moment, thinking about the question.

"One time," she says, slowly starting to speak. "I ran away from home as a kid and I lived in the park for a whole 48 hours. I was starving and scared to go anywhere near people 'cause I knew I'd be caught, so I climbed up a tree and ate some bird eggs out of a nest."

Her face crumples with disgust at the memory.

"I've never eaten eggs again," she says. "The taste was abominable." 

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She breezes past the hurt look on the other woman's face with the professionalism of a public figure who has been interrogated more than one time on her sexual life by the paparazzi. Ignoring uncomfortable feelings, be they hers or someone else's, is somewhat of a hobby for Thalia, although she supposes she can't use that to answer the question.

Her calm facade hints a mental road bump at the next statement though. Thalia's brain treads water and looks for answers: is she being hit on? The other woman--she doesn't even know her name, Thalia realizes--is pretty, and she seems nice enough. Their hair would clash terribly, but that's no reason to turn someone down. Maybe if Thalia stopped dyeing it--she'd get less attention that way too.

Her hair twirling comes to a slow stop as she briefly unfolds an entire life in her head, down to a white picket fence and three dogs.

"I, uh," she says smartly, "I'm kind of all work and no play. It's a personal failing. Work is really busy, but sometimes I bring a crossword and do that. I'm not very good, but I'm getting faster. I beat a Wednesday crossword in nine minutes the other day. And obviously I like going out to bars and drinking, because here I am."

She watches herself ramble with horror. It's an out of body experience. It's nothing she can stop.

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Oh wow, she's uh, she's definitely being hit on. It's not like it's a new experience, but it's definitely more welcome when a) the person is a woman and b) apparently has no idea who she is. There's something relieving about being hit on as Thalia de Luca (or as a nameless pinkette in a bar), and not as Valkyrie. Something intoxicating about it, even.

Not that that stops her from downing her glass of vodka after the woman calls her pretty, and then waving weakly for another a second from the bartender. 

She doesn't know what to say. She hasn't known what to say for this entire conversation, but now she really doesn't know what to say. She doesn't want to ruin this moment, which has started to feel like it has stepped out of reality into some place warmer and safer, by admitting she's a de facto celebrity, a weapon, a hero, a freak, take your pick. She wants, amazingly and for possibly the first time in years, to just be Thalia de Luca.

"I work for a large company," she says, which isn't a lie. It isn't the entire truth, but it isn't a lie, she assures herself. "It's not that exciting." Okay, that one is a bald-faced lie. She tries to move on quickly, turn the spotlight off herself. "What do you do?"

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That's a nice arm. Thalia tries not to stare. She's also suddenly glad she's wearing sleeves. Her own arms are not nearly as impressive. She goes to the gym, but she's only lifting cars 'cause of her mind.

"That's cool," she says. "I kinda feel the same. It's good to get out of my head." 

Not even Thalia believes she deserves to be stuck in her own head. Okay, she believes it a little, but that doesn't mean she wants to be there. 

Oh. Here it is. The moment when everything is probably going to be over. It's been nice so far, but everything ends. She knows that as well as she knows anything else. Her stomach is sinking, but Thalia slaps on a smile as the woman--Marisa--gives her her name. 

It's a nice name. Old-fashioned, maybe, but who is she to judge? Her name is Thalia. That shit is classical. 

"I'm Thalia," she says, and holds out her hand after placing her second drink carefully on the bar. Careful not to shatter it accidentally because she's nervous. 

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