Axle had laughed, his gravelly voice coming out in blasts like the gleeful barks of a dog, when Nalia did her exaggerated impression of giving someone 'those eyes'. Hearing him joyful was an event Galen never expected to witness as he originally walked in, and he knew better than to comment on it. He wasn't sure if he'd interrupted anything between Axle and the lady - hopefully not. At least the barkeep seemed somewhat happy to have someone else visit her establishment.<br/><br/>"Ooh," Galen replied with slight excitement as Nalia mentioned the songbooks. He wasn't quite sure how all these complicated devices worked, but - 'song' and 'book', what else could it be but a collection of songs to look through? He was a little surprised that there were only titles and pictures to represent said songs rather than music sheets, but it was interesting seeing the sheer amount of musical content. He whistled softly as he browsed through... truth be told, it was overwhelming. "I don't need anything, thanks!" he answered quickly as Nalia asked if he wanted to have something.<br/><br/>While Galen was busy, Axle decided to ignore his presence and try to return to the conversation he was having, after downing another drink. He wasn't interested in singing himself, anyway. "Got any pretzels, Ma'am? Got a craving," he said off-handedly, before focusing up. "Anyway, you asked something... oh yeah, you mentioned spacing out. I guess you could say that happened to me there, yeah..."<br/><br/>His gaze got a little distant. In the past it had been positive to think of Lauren and Gemma - it had helped him focus, given him the mental energy to carry on, no matter how grim things got as he travelled through timelines trying to fix the mess the future had become. Of course the time-travelling device didn't work here - not even killing himself worked here. And now that he'd died trying to protect his family, what were once sweet memories now made him anxious. He'd been able to fix anything; just go back, go back more, try again at another point in time until you succeed, but now... he couldn't protect them. He couldn't do anything anymore. His enemies across so many different timelines had finally beaten him.<br/><br/>"You... reminded me of someone," he said finally after a pause, his eyes rearing up slowly to meet hers. "Well, not that you look like her. Or sound like her. Or have anything the fuck at all to do with her. But when I spaced out, I got this really vivid image of her when I looked at you somehow."<br/>He cleared his throat, realizing he still hadn't said who he was talking about. "Lauren, I mean. My wife. I also saw Gemma with her."<br/>He leaned on his elbow, his fingers roaming restlessly below his lips and across his skin as he could still clearly summon that image, like it was burned into his retinas. He forced himself to focus on Nalia again. Though he already knew the answer of what he was about to ask, he still asked anyway.<br/>"There's no way out of this place, is there, Ma'am?"