Bella is glad that he is okay. And that he can teleport away from overeager fans. It would not do if he were helpless against a mob of people who have seen him mostly naked and want to correct the "mostly" without undergoing accepted procedure.

When Bella hears about this, she offers him a copy of her Bell-standard comfort in arbitrary weather.

Poof. [Poof. I love you too.]

[Now I can be shirtless more often! My fans will also love you.]

[As well they ought.]

[Talking to the speechwriters. Whyever do you ask?]

[Take a guess.]

[Mmmm, drawing a complete blank, here.]

[Well, I'll be at home, playing the guitar, shirtless, while you figure it out.]

[It is times like this that I am most tempted to ignore your knocking thing.]

[We-ell. Just this once, if you warn me first, you can skip the knocking.]

[But if I warn you how will I sneak up on you with kisses?]

[If you sneak up on me with kisses I might drop my guitar, and that would be tragic.]

[It's fixable.]

[Or you could wait until I'm not holding my guitar,] he suggests thoughtfully. [Don't you have that superspy power?]

[That is true. I could just be imperceptible until you happened to put it down.]

[This is a strangely appealing plan.]

[Well, then I believe I shall not tell you when this meeting is scheduled to end.]

Ripper laughs. [Ooh. Suspenseful.]

[In a good way?]

He thinks about it, then says, [Yeah. I mean, as long as the meeting isn't going to run for a day or something. Somewhere between a few minutes and a few hours?]

[Somewhere in that range, yes. My speechwriters still have to eat and sleep. Well, most of them.]

[Brilliant, then. I'll see you at some unspecified time in the next few hours. Love you.]

Ripper has finished playing the guitar, and has apparently decided to tempt fate, because he's having a cup of tea while he goes through his archive of mostly naked pictures of himself. (There are a lot of them by now. He thinks he might go back to that original graveyard shoot for his next album cover; he hasn't used any from it yet.)

Bella insinuates herself into his lap. There is still no sign of her. She watches pictures go by and leans her head on his shoulder and is a snuggly ninja. She waits for tea to be put down. She decides to see if his earlobe tastes like anything right now.

She snuggles up. She renders herself audible, breathing near his ear. "Hello."

"This was a good idea," he murmurs.

Ripper mmmmmmmaybe whimpers a little bit.

It further turns out that this makes Ripper get kind of squirmy! In the good way. The extremely good way.

She is still sitting on his lap, and will find that this limits his squirming, despite the fact that he can't detect her weight. That could be interesting.

"I love you," he says dreamily.

"I love you too," she murmurs against the part of him she is currently nibbling.

Bella has decided that this is Induce Maximum Positive Ripper Squirms Day.

Oh, good. Bella does like to succeed at her goals.

She is succeeding the hell out of this one.

Mmmm, Extreme Kisses. Best kind.

Mmhmm.

Aianon is!

So is Isibel.

Excellent. They meet in Bella's palace and Bella conjures elf tea and she starts talking about the latest batch of escapees from Arkham - the Joker's old prison-asylum - who got out, started causing trouble, eluded local police, and now live on Ganymede.

Isibel listens, and replies with the enchantments she has been doing - and also what Lycaelon and Liselen have been doing to help. Lately she has adjusted the parameters of her enchanted village to accommodate the needs of centaurs, a few families of which have moved in. It sounds like both of their worlds are doing quite well.

It's a few weeks after that when Bella says to Ripper, [Renée wants to meet you. Charlie probably does too, but Renée is the one who thought to ask.]

[...well,] says Ripper. [All right.]

[It took her this long to ask because I was kind of dead for kind of a long time and I think she has some sort of weird hybridized view of me where I am only partially real and only partially her kid, but yeah. When's good?]

[Anywhen, really, I don't have any commitments in the next few days.]

[Okay. She moved to Saturn the other week, so she's on your time zone, does lunch tomorrow sound good?]

[Sure! Any horror stories I should know first?]

[Huh?]

[I'll take that as a no.]

[What'd you mean?]

[Some people's parents come with warnings attached.]

[Oh. No, not mine particularly, they're not particularly interesting. Renée's been divorced twice now, broke up with my stepdad while I was dead, is that a relevant warning?]

[Not the kind I was thinking of, but it's good to know.]

[Golden's identical stepdad also eventually ceased to be married to the Aurum Renée but under somewhat different circumstances. Even though that Renée totally thought Golden was dead for like five years,] hmms Bella. [I wonder why.]

Ripper laughs. [You and your analyzing. Different times in their lives, maybe?]

[Not by much. Me and Golden share a birthdate; I died the February I was seventeen and she faked her death the subsequent October. I suppose it could be relevant that she was pretending to have died in a fire and I kicked it in a hospital after getting creamed by the same car that got Stella and almost got Golden. Might be relevant that Golden was married and telling her mom that she was pregnant at the time, I guess, although I can't see how that would help.]

[It doesn't have to help; it just has to change things.]

[Well, I mean help the relationship stay together. I never liked Phil all that much but Renée sure did at one point.]

[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!"

"Ooh, what'd you watch?"

"That it does," says Ripper. "It's sort of pretty."

"Have you done it? Goodness," says Renée.

He laughs. "Well, I've seen what it looks like."

"'S good," Ripper says cheerfully. Nom nom nom.

"I'm glad you like it. I asked Bella if you would want anything specific but she told me you were an omnivore," says Renée. "I know you sing - I love the Song of Saturn, I haven't looked into your other work - what else do you do?"

"I also play the guitar," he says, laughing.

"And write songs - but I meant nonmusically?"

"Honestly, nothing much," he says. "Music's enough to keep me busy."

"What bubble do you live in? Have you and your neighbors named it yet or is it still going by number? When I moved in here it was already called Shipley for some reason, I should ask Agatha why."

"No name yet. And I'm not gonna think of one; I'm terrible at naming things."

"It also seems to slow people down that they have to be unique names and no one living in the bubble at the time can strenuously object before the transit system will officially log it."

He laughs.

"I don't even remember if I checked the population of my bubble before I moved there," Ripper admits. "Too long ago. It's pretty full now, though."

"Do you talk to your neighbors much?" Renée asks. "Mine were very friendly. Agatha came over the day I moved in with a nice little cross-stitch to hang in my window and we talked about setting up a nice group visit to the zoo."

"That's cute," he says. "I don't see mine much. Every so often when we hit a skating rink or a park or something."

"Introvert?" inquires Renée, taking a second helping of pasta. "Or do your friends just all live on Earth or in other bubbles?"

"Introvert. More or less."

"More or less?" inquires Renée.

"I get gregarious moods, but they don't last long."

"Ah, fair enough. And I believe you still perform? In front of lots of people!"

"That's different."

"I believe I'd be quite terrified to be on stage in front of such an audience," confides Renée.

"I actually love it. But yeah, it's not for everyone."

"Nobody here knows that Bella's my daughter," confides Renée. "I don't know at all what would happen if they did."

"If anyone in my bubble knows I'm dating her, they don't pester me about it, which I'm very thankful for."

"I like Saturn. The bubbles thing is a good design. Well done, Bella."

"That's beautiful," laughs Ripper.

"I want to visit the trampoline park," Ripper declares, grinning at Bella. "We should go there sometime."

He giggles.

"Mmm!" agrees Ripper.

"Have you met Charlie yet?" Renée asks Ripper.

He shakes his head.

"Are you likely to?"

He shrugs. "Maybe."

He laughs. "I love you," he says, and kisses her.

Mmmkisses. Hallway kisses. He might want to "answer the door".

Or he could just teleport them directly into his bedroom.

That also works! Kisses kisses. Bella is mocha-flavored.

Ripper tastes like hazelnut! Together they are some kind of delicious dessert.

They are the most delicious dessert. Mmmm.

Tasty.

[No special warnings for him either, I guess? Sure.]

[You might or might not get a "if you hurt her, insert vague threat here" speech. He can't do anything, he's a small-town cop and you are magic. Okay. Dinner Thursday?]

[That's our time zone, mind, his time zone will be claiming that it's brunch, so we're looking at breakfasty food.]

[Oh no,] he says dryly, [breakfast at dinnertime. The horror. I may never recover.]

[Be strong, love.]

Ripper giggles.

Thursday, at dinnertime, Bella knocks on Ripper's door.

He answers, shirtfully, and gives her a hug.

"Yeah," he laughs, "everybody does."

"I can tell," says Ripper.

"So tell me about yourself," Charlie tells Ripper.

"What's there to tell? I make music. I like bacon. I live on Saturn."

"Yes," says Charlie, mouth twitching slightly, "I looked up some of your music. What genre would you call that?"

"I've been described as 'punk rock'."

"Those kind of lyrics typical for the type?"

"More or less. Well, depends which songs you heard."

"First few on each album. A sampling."

"Would've quit after the first one if you weren't dating my daughter," says Charlie frankly, cream-cheesing a bagel half.

"Eh, and? I know I'm not for everybody."

"I'm proud of that one."

"It is," says Bella, "the best anthem. When Saturn gets crowded and I start putting bubbles on Jupiter, I will have you write a Jovian anthem too."

"Sure," he says affectionately.

"Yeah," says Ripper, smiling.

Ripper nods.

"And now they have all these vacated Earth houses to choose from," says Bella. "The people who significantly lose out are the ones who were using real estate as an investment, not people who want places to live."

"Can they get the vacated Earth houses, though?

"All right," he concedes.

Brunch-dinner continues in a similar vein, until they're picking at the last crumbs of bagel and bacon and Bella's agreeing to go with Charlie to see some movie the following Saturday. Eventually she and Ripper make their goodbyes and she teleports them to his hallway. (And knocks.) "What was it that I was supposed to ask you later about?"

"Okay, I'll stop." She flops into a chair. "I'm now imagining you and Rayne committing assorted medium-sized crimes and encountering cops."

"What should I be imagining instead? Why do you think unkind thoughts about cops?"

"I think unkind thoughts about cops because they'll give you shit whether you break the law or not, that's—how do you run a planet and not know that?"

"Saturn doesn't have cops," she points out. "And my interaction with Earth cops is mostly Charlie; it is probably fair to say that I'm biased, I guess, but still. There are bad cops, but there are also bad kindergarten teachers and bad retail workers and bad doctors and people don't think unkind thoughts about those professions as groups."

"There are good cops. Seems like your dad might be one of them. But when you live where I've lived, how I've lived, you mostly can't afford to bet on that."

"I know very little about UK law enforcement. Mostly when I interact with them we are talking about how I can make them more redundant, I mean efficient."

"It's not just a UK thing. Whatever, this probably isn't an argument we need to have."

"Yeah, I guess."

He sighs.

"You okay?"

Hugs.

Snuggles.