Tony laughs. "Well, don't try it," he says. "The cloning thing, I mean. Totally try the gene sequencing."

"Yet you wouldn't stop a twelve-year-old you who was going to try the cloning thing," observes Pattern.

"Yeah, because I know Sherry, and I know the clone would be a Sherry. We don't know who a cloned you would be. And even though it turns out well when it's Sherry, 'for science' is a bad reason to have kids."

"Golden didn't exactly have Elspeth for politics, but she had her when she had her because she needed an explanation for removing one of the Volturi's human servants," Pattern volunteers.

"...That seems kind of sketchy, but I wasn't there, so maybe it was the best idea going," shrugs Tony.

"Well, the alternatives were leaving Elspeth's surrogate mother to die, or delivering some sort of speech to the people-eating paranoid trigger happy vampire rulers of the world about the value of human life."

"Yep. So, best idea going."

"I mean, people have kids because of accident all the time, I'm not sure scientific motivations are worse than 'whoops' and 'whoops' kids routinely turn out fine. I have no imminent plans to clone myself, though."

"I dunno, like, the danger with cloning yourself for science is that if you're doing it for science and not for the kid then you might end up caring about the science more than the kid, or not knowing what to do with them once you've got 'em, and I mean I fully acknowledge that I'm projecting here but it just - it could have been so not worth it."

"I'm not going to produce any kids I don't plan to rear in an appropriate and caring manner, regardless of ulterior motive."

"Well, then maybe you're safe," he says. "But I still don't think you should clone yourself. ...Although come to think of it, that would make a pretty good distinguishing feature."

"It would! But I'm still not going to do it, at least not in the near future. Golden kind of had to have her kid when she was seventeen, that doesn't mean I should even if that were the only reason to avoid it. Even if I was chronologically born twenty-one years ago."

"Being dead makes everything weird," says Tony.

"So weird! My parents took my return with surprising aplomb, really."

"I'm glad!"

"Your parents are dead, right? Did you want them fetched? I haven't heard about you asking but if you asked somebell else or went through Jane directly I might not have been told."

He sighs. "...I don't know, whatever, it's complicated."

"...Don't wanna talk about it?"

"They kind of ignored me for most of my life, so you know, while I'm glad they're not going to stay dead forever, I don't really need them to be dragged out of the afterlife ASAP."

"Okay." Beat. "Rose is going to fetch her Renée soon. She died when Rose was a kid for some reason. None of the rest of us have dead parents."

Tony shrugs.