+Interesting. Did you design that or did he?+

+Me!+

+Some stuff,+ he says. +Joker said it might help with the making the coins part if we snuggled while you did it, and I bet it would.+

+Well, are you gonna?+

+I probably should, but now I'm curious about all those other pairs. I want to know about them, I want to meet those Bells and ask them about stuff. But none of them has a Lexi, so if I'm wired special somehow because of having a Lexi then I have to work it out myself.+

+I wonder if having just one favourite person is a you thing or an all-of-you thing,+ muses Brilliance.

+I - don't know. One of them has a kid,+ Bella says uncertainly. +I really, really want to talk to her - all of them - I wish he'd brought at least one of them here - I don't know. But I think that's what favorite means, isn't it? Priorities, nice neat numerical orderings, I bet you the one with a kid could answer me if I swore myself to secrecy and asked who she'd save if she had to pick.+

+I don't think Jokers do nice neat numerical orderings,+ says Brilliance. +I only love two people and I am already weirded out by the thought of picking between them - I mean, out of the two of you, you're the one I want to spend the rest of your life with, but I'm not sure if - I don't feel like that means there's a hierarchy and you're on top of it. And I'd save you from just about anything before I'd save him, but that's not a hard choice, we're more okay with bad things happening to us than you are.+

+- you know something,+ says Bella, +I bet I have the worst relationship with my parents out of any of them.+

+I think not having parents gives me the best relationship with my parents out of all the Jokers,+ says Brilliance. +He's told me some stories. But why's that for you?+

+Because they don't have Lexis. And I have a Lexi. And I love Lexi - but I was sometimes a morbid child, you know, and I'm just now remembering something that happened when we were eight, I don't think I could have even called it to mind before hexing up perfect recall, but - I asked Renée what she'd do if me and Lexi were both in trouble and she could only save one of us. And she hugged me and said that was never going to happen and she didn't answer me. And the others don't have Lexis. They never had to ask the question.+

+...okay,+ says Brilliance, +keeping in mind that I don't have parents, so this is all kind of abstract to me, but I feel like if I was in that situation, I would feel shitty whether the person I was asking picked me, or picked my favourite person, or couldn't answer. Differently shitty, but shitty any which way you slice it.+

+Yeah, but - for me either answer would've been better than 'that's never going to happen'. Because instead of Renée telling me that she thought I had more potential maybe, or that she got along better with Lexi which she does, or something, she decided to tell me that no matter what I'm planning for, if the stakes are high I can't count on her. If I'm trying to save Lexi from something and that puts me in danger, maybe Renée gets in my way. If I have a desperate attack of selfishness and I'm trying to throw Lexi under a metaphorical bus, maybe Renée interferes with that. Renée could've hurt my feelings some, and instead she decided to muck up my entire planning mechanism. I never asked Charlie the question but he'd answer the same way, so, same problem.+

+Maybe she didn't decide to muck up your planning mechanism,+ says Brilliance. +Maybe she just didn't know.+

+Probably. But at age eight I was not quite competent to say "Mom, you are mucking up my planning mechanism, and if I don't receive an answer to that question it will give me trust issues way worse than either possible answer, please pick one of us and then stick to it or notify me if you change your mind". You know?+

+Gotcha,+ says Brilliance.

+I had the conversation with Lexi herself not long after that - and a few updatey times since - and I eventually got her to get it even though she was confused at first, she's always been pretty biddable when I'm being serious with her. And Lexi and I decided on things between ourselves like - like people who know how priorities work. And I can trust her.+

+...What'd you decide?+

+In any situation of uncertainty, if we might be able to save us both, we do that. And if it is really just an evil binary choice, where exactly one of us walks out no matter how hard we try to cheat, it depends on what we're walking out into - by default Lexi gets to live in that kind of setup, but I also pointed out that those kinds of situations are very unlikely unless some high-leverage power is getting thrown around, and we agreed I could do better with that than her. So if this happened now I'd lose her, but then I'd have all the magic of the multiverse to try to get her back.+

+I wanna hug you now,+ he says. +Can I teleport there and hug you?+

+Yeah, she's downstairs already.+

Hug!