[Right, no, I mean - did yours actually break up because you were dead?]

[It's the most obvious difference between my case and Stella's. Or Juliet's. Juliet also died, but she came back way quicker than I did, her parents didn't find out. Stella got hit by the car, didn't avoid it altogether like Golden, but Alice patched her up before she would've died.]

[Sure, but that doesn't mean you being dead was what broke them up, directly. So whatever it was about you being dead that made the difference, it just might not have come around like that with Golden. Or, I don't know, maybe it did and half the time when that happens your mom gets a divorce and half the time she doesn't and you're seeing one of each.]

[I suppose. Or, I dunno, maybe it's some knock-on effect of the magic in the other worlds that didn't take place here, or conversely something about Gotham, or some different template that appears here or there but hasn't made itself obtrusively relevant yet. But it's not as tempting an explanation - we have disturbingly similar childhoods, we can recite the exact same conversation about why blue raspberry exists as a flavor from when we were six, and that seems much easier to perturb than anyone's marital status.]

[Eh. Wait'll you can ask Glass, I guess.]

[I did. Renée was already divorced when I came back from the dead. Glass said she'd have to look at her to get an idea why, and I haven't told my parents about alts and stuff yet. They actually have pretty much only common knowledge about what I can do.]

[Why's that?]

[Different reasons per parent - I think Charlie would find it overwhelming and Renée would want to meet everybody I mentioned as examples. I have no idea what her and any one of the Jokers in the same room would do. I might get around to it eventually, if it comes up, if they ask prying questions.]

[Has no-Bell else introduced her mum to a Joker?]

[Oh, sure they have. All under very different circumstances - in particular most of them were combining the 'hi, Mom or Dad, this is a Joker' visit with the 'hi, Mom or Dad, this is my boyfriend' visit. Sooner or later, anyway - Aurora went the other way around but she has a noticeably different parent-child relationship from everybody else because of her sister. Stella was friends with Alice first, but Alice was a fellow high school student at the time, not her mysterious magical staffperson, and also Stella's Charlie was friends with his family's housekeeper.]

[Aha. Well, no rush, I guess.]

[It's maybe possible I can explain alts without getting her interested in meeting any Jokers, I suppose. I probably should. It's been years, and none of the other informed parental figures insist on showing up to Bellparties.]

He laughs.

[Which is good, because that would be really weird.]

[Would it?]

[Foreign Renées and Charlies milling around with miscellaneous otherworldly species, gossiping about us with each other, Charlies being conspicuously uncomfortable, Renées wanting to go visit each other without getting how a lot of us are working under secrecy constraints, both of them trying to be parental at Bells who don't belong to them? Yes. Weird.]

He laughs. [All right, I'm convinced.]

[Good. So I guess that's a warning of sorts. Hmmm, I wonder if there's anything else.]

[Couldn't tell you.]

[Well, I can urgently relay information to you by brainphone if something comes up.]

[It's a deal.]

The next day, Bella announces at about lunchtime, [Lunchtime.] And there is a knock at Ripper's door.

He opens it. Wearing a shirt!

"So I've heard!" he says. "Hi!"