"He's—different," says Alice. "I dunno how different. More different than me or the Joker. He's still us, but he's... I don't know, happier? Maybe that's the wrong word. He's been happier, for longer. He's had it better than we ever did."

"How'd that happen, or wasn't there much swapping of life histories?"

"He ran away from home way early. Like, when he was ten or so. And he fell in with these people called the Edori who're like... an entire society of me. They go wherever they want and fuck whoever they want and have fun and love each other."

"An entire society of you," repeats Bella. "Well, that certainly sounds... friendly."

"They are! I'm pretty sure he's had more sex than I have, and I used to be a whore!"

Bella bursts out laughing. "Oh wow. Okay then. Angela seems so repressed I don't think she'd have been so comfortable with a standard-issue Whistle, anyway, but maybe a happier one with a fitting cultural background she already had a chance to learn about is close enough to work."

"And he steals stuff, but he's trying to stop 'cause she doesn't like it. He's never killed anybody. I don't think he even would," says Alice, like it's almost inconceivable. "Well, if he really had to, probably."

"Huh. So I guess there's a... Whistle spectrum, with him on one end labeled "benign" and the Joker on the other. I'm not sure how to order you and Kas in the middle there though. Haven't met him yet."

"Micaiah did. He's between me and the Joker," says Alice. "If you have to line us up like that."

"I don't have to, but it's an interesting exercise. What d'you know about Kas secondhand to put him there, then?"

"Blew up his parents."

"That'd do it, yeah," acknowledges Bella. "I take it Micaiah's are alive and well? If he ran away that young they might not even have gotten caught like your dad eventually did."

"Angela went back and found them. He has a little brother," Alice says, shivering slightly.

"Oh yikes. What happened with the little brother?"

"They've met. He's... not a me," says Alice. "He's really not a me. The most me thing Micaiah's seen him do is saying thank you to Angela after she said he didn't have to."

"But Angela got him out somehow, he's not still there," Bella clarifies.

"Yeah. Yeah, she did."

"Good. I was half-worried she'd come up with an explanation for why Jovah must have put him there for a reason or something. She's really very thoroughly religious. It's kind of unnerving."

"If she ever said that, Micaiah would fuck right off," he asserts. "He's still that much of a me."

"He took it pretty quietly when she said Jovah didn't want them to have magic powers," Bella says doubtfully.

"Can you seriously not figure out by yourself how those things are different?"

"I can figure out how they're different. But we have us some good magic powers. If she cares enough about abused children to find and rescue one she happens to hear about, she must be doing some serious throttling of her natural instincts to not seek the ability to find and rescue more of them besides that."

"...I guess," he says.

"I'm still working out a ground rule for that that I can implement on Earth for a Cygnus present and still fall under the only-obviously-evil-people-will-object criterion," says Bella. "Unfortunately, there is enough mainstream controversy about what constitutes child abuse that I haven't thought of one yet, and I'm not out of diseases to cure." She sighs.

"I love you," he says comfortably.