"Are we allowed to be here?" Janet whispered, twisting her hands together nervously as she huddled against Jack's side. She was beautiful in a deep red gown that brought out the highlights that had appeared in her hair during the day. The gown was cut low enough to give her a sense of maturity, but high enough to still cover her modestly. It went to her ankles, adding a nice touch of elegance, and the golden heels were just high enough to bring the top of her head to Jack's nose. Her jewellery was also gold, set with rubies, and her hair was back in a French twist with the ends curled.

"Of course we are; B owns the place," Jack assured her. The red of his vest and tie matched her dress and he nodded in approval. "You look great."

She blushed as he held her chair out for her. "Thanks. Ms. Monroe and her employees were very nice to me."

"That's because B was paying them a lot."

"Thanks for dinner, by the way," Raoul said as he kicked Jack under the table. "I'm sure all of us appreciate it."

"Rachel wants me to bring her back that cream baklava," Jack told Bruce. "And I can't go back without it. The woman's crazy."

"Just like you," Bruce said easily as the waitress started pouring them all wine.

"Ah-ah-ah," Jack said as he wagged his finger at the man. "Ahead of the curve."

Janet's eyes got big when the waitress picked her glass up. "Oh, I'm ---"

"It's all right," Bruce assured her. "You can have a little wine."

"Hey, I'll drink what you don't; wine just makes me sleepy, anyway." Jack took a sip from his glass and then nodded in approval. "It's good."

"Better than the trailer park wine you usually get?"

"Boxed wine's just as good as this crap," Jack returned, winking at Janet. "Hell of a lot cheaper, too."

"Watch it," Bruce said as he jabbed his fork at the other man, "or you're buying Rachel her next bit of jewellery."

"I can do that. See, it turns out I'm still on Charles' payroll, and it's direct-deposit. I was so used to not having my own bank account that I completely forgot they'd transferred Harleen's to me. I've got plenty of money."

"What about your bills, after Harleen died?" Raoul asked.

"That's what Rachel was for; she took care of most of my expenses, and it wasn't until we moved that I was given complete access to the bank account, anyway." He grinned. "I take care of her, she takes care of me. It works."

"I didn't think silk hankies counted as taking care of her," Raoul teased, then he looked at Janet and went a little pale. Janet took a serene sip of her wine as all three men started talking at once, trying to explain the comment away. Then she made a nasty face and coughed, quickly setting her glass down in disgust.

"I uh, I know about Jack and Rachel's, ah . . . play times," she said when they'd paused to catch their breaths.

Bruce turned a glare on Jack, who held his hands up in self-defence. "Hey, I didn't say a thing!"

"Rachel told me," Janet said. She was blushing, but holding together admirably well. "I mean, she didn't give me specifics, but . . . uhm . . ."

"When did this happen?" Jack wanted to know.

"Couple of weeks ago. I was helping her clean the house, and uhm, I dropped a box . . ."

"When I was over at Tom's? Bah, I told her I'd help when I got home . . ." Jack rolled his eyes in disgust, but didn't seem particularly upset or even embarrassed that he and Rachel's secret was out. "Well, you and Hayden can't borrow anything, so don't ask."

"Jack! She's only sixteen!" Bruce protested.

"Doesn't mean she can't have sex. With someone her own age."

"But I told you, I told him my legs are sealed for the time being. Welded together, in fact. He wasn't happy about it." Janet shrugged. "I told him that my mom's missing, I've been put in foster care --- even if it is with people I like, and in town to boot --- and that this just isn't a good time for anything, really. So . . . yeah, we're not seeing each other any more." She looked down at the table, obviously hurt by the situation.

"I told you he's an idiot," Jack said after a moment. "People should listen to me more." Then he reached out and covered Janet's gloved hand with his own, squeezing gently. "You're too good to waste on him, anyway." Janet ducked her head and smiled up at Jack through her lashes as the pink flush across her cheeks deepened.

. . . that's where i'll hold you, sleeping like a child . . .

He shook his head once, sharply, and turned the conversation to the next night's concert. It provided sufficient distraction for the woman-child in red to stop being so alluringly untouched, gave Jack enough of a breather to get his aching head on straight for the rest of dinner. He needed no reminder that he was back in Gotham, but he did have to concentrate on his behaviour, on keeping a low profile. He didn't need the media hysteria that would come about if someone recognised him and flipped about the Joker being back in town. Really, after fourteen years it oughtn't be something to freak out over, but still . . . Sometimes it paid to keep a low profile.

And sometimes one got noticed no matter what. Jack was reminded of that when Janet started glancing to the side every few minutes, and finally leaned toward him. "Uhm, do you know those two?" she whispered. "The man with the, uhm, the Jewish . . . thing . . . on his head?"

"Yamaka," Jack responded automatically as he nabbed the last piece of bread before Bruce could. He took his time spreading butter --- real butter, damn it, not that fake crap Rachel insisted on --- over it, then turned just enough to see the older couple two tables down. He dropped his bread on the floor and turned back to the table, almost knocking his wine glass over as his entire body went cold. "Shit," he whispered. He was staring down at his hands as they gripped the tablecloth tightly, almost hyperventilating as panic struck him. "Shit. Shit."

"What's wrong? Who are they?" Janet was frightened --- of course she was. Her mother was missing, presumed dead, and the person who had taken her was trying to kill Jack, who wasn't afraid of anything. Except, maybe, the elderly Jewish couple behind him.

"Do you need to get some air?" Bruce asked with concern. "They're not trouble, are they?"

Jack was breathing shallowly through his mouth and shook his head quickly. "No --- I just --- it's not --- those are Harleen's folks." And here he was, with Rachel nowhere in sight, with another woman . . .

"Oh." Bruce offered Jack some water and watched him down it frantically. "Should we skip dessert?"

"No, I'm --- I just . . . I wasn't expecting them."

"Well, here they come," Raoul murmured, giving Jack just enough time to hunch his shoulders before Rabbi Quinzel spoke.

"Hello, Jack."

He flinched like he'd been hit, looking like he was trying to melt into the floor. "Uh . . . hi." He kept his eyes on the table, his hands gripping the edges until they were white.

"We haven't . . . seen you in a while."

The older man got a shrug. "Yeah, uh, I moved. Upstate."

"So we heard. And . . . Rachel, is it?" Jack nodded, short and jerky movements. "How is she?"

"Uh . . . fine. She's not here." He winced, realising how stupid he sounded, and attempted to grow a backbone as he straightened and finally looked up at his former in-laws. "She'd have come down with us, but the doctor didn't want her travelling. A couple friends are staying with her."

"I hope she's all right," Harleen's mother said with a frown.

Jack shrugged. He really didn't want them knowing that he and Rachel were living the life that he and their daughter had never had the chance to live. "Yeah, she's fine, it's just a precaution. She's uhm . . . well, we're . . . So, this is Bruce Wayne, and Raoul Gillespie. And uh, Janet Mills. Uh, this is Abraham Quinzel, and uh, Marni Quinzel. They're uhm, they're Harleen's parents," he explained again. "My uhm, my first wife."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Bruce said with a smile. "Care to sit down?"

The Quinzels looked down at Jack as Janet touched his hand gently. He shrugged. "Uh, yeah, have a seat. B owns the place, it's all good. If you want to."

It took a few tense minutes before the Quinzels were seated with them, and Abraham cleared his throat as he finally sat. "What brings you to town?"

"Uh, a concert. Rachel made me go. Uhm. The tickets were an anniversary gift, but she can't come, but Janet likes the band, so . . ." Jack cleared his throat. "Uh, Janet's my uhm, I mean, Rachel and I are . . ."

"Jack and Rachel are my foster parents for the time being," Janet finally spoke up. "My mom's . . . she's . . ." She cleared her throat, as well, but went on bravely. "My mom went missing almost a month ago. Jack and Rachel took me and my sister in until she's found."

That made the older couple pause for a moment. Obviously, Jack in any sort of position of responsibility where children were concerned had never occurred to them. Unless it was to give them nightmares, maybe. Marni cleared her throat after a moment.

"I'm so sorry to hear that, dear. I hope everything turns out all right. And Rachel, you said she's ill?"

Jack sighed and covered his eyes with one hand. "She's pregnant," he finally admitted. He peeked out at the two from between his fingers. They were staring at him in shock. "Yeah, we got knocked up," he coughed. "Uh, it's a girl, her name's Ava Mirelle, she's due January ninth." He shut up, not wanting to look at Harleen's parents. They'd lost her daughter to a psychopath, then lost her for good when she'd died; they'd never gotten the chance to be grandparents. They'd never been able to hold a grandbaby. Harleen had always been . . . not against children, per se, but it had never been the 'right time,' according to her. The terrified look on Jack's face whenever the subject had been brought up had probably played a big role in that, too.

"Congratulations," was Abraham's quiet yet sincere response a few moments later.

"Thanks," he murmured. Then he cleared his throat as he dropped his hand to his pocket, where his wallet and pictures rested. "I'm uh, I'm sorry I haven't been in contact ---"

"Why should you have been?" Abraham asked. "We shunned you after you married Harleen, and after she died, you had no reason to talk to us. If anything, I'm sorry that Marni and I didn't check in on you. Whether we liked it or not, you were our son-in-law, and we should have stepped up and supported you." He pursed his lips before taking a sip of wine.

"Look, I understand now and I understood then," Jack argued. "It didn't bother me. I mean, I'm glad you don't hate me, but you don't have to make yourselves uncomfortable over it. I already had more people there for me than I knew what to do with." His phone buzzed and he grabbed it out of his pocket, glad for the distraction. It was a video message from Rachel and he frowned as he flipped the phone open and waited for it to download. "Sorry; it's from Rachel . . ."

The video started with the camera pointing at Rachel's bare stomach. Susie or Charles must have been holding it, then. "Are you ready?" Rachel asked.

"Yeah!" Susie's voice replied. The camera shook a little. "Daddy's gonna love this!"

Jack wasn't sure who she was talking about, but Rachel laughed. "All right, Jack, see this? Ava's awake, but she's not moving. Watch this."

He frowned when Rachel's voice started again; he'd been making recordings of himself talking to Ava, so the baby could hear his voice when he wasn't around, and this was a recording that Rachel had spoken in, too. They were reading a story. Rachel's hand curled around her stomach and rubbed gently as Susie giggled, then Jack started speaking. Rachel's stomach contorted almost immediately as Ava started moving around. Jack's eyebrows went up.

As soon as his voice stopped, Ava stopped moving. "Wait, there's more," Rachel murmured. Her voice continued the story, but Ava stayed still until Jack spoke again, at which point she started moving once more. The camera angled up to Rachel's beaming face after a moment. "She knows your voice, sweety. Isn't that amazing? Ava loves her Daddy and misses you. The video's almost done; call us!" It froze on her smile and Jack stared at it for a while, a huge grin creeping across his features.

"What was that?" Bruce wanted to know.

Jack looked up quickly, then back at the frozen image. "Ava knows my voice," he murmured. "Uhm . . . Rachel and I, we've been recording stories and stuff, so she can play them back to Ava while she's at work. Apparently they were listening to one and Ava started moving when she heard me." Jack wasn't shrieking with laughter. He wanted to, though. He wanted to leap up and laugh and dance because his little girl already knew his voice, knew who he was. He did start chuckling, but since no one gave him strange looks, it obviously wasn't too overboard. "Wanna watch?" Then he looked at the Quinzels and swallowed sharply, not knowing if they'd be offended, or jealous, or . . . something. He didn't know how people reacted to things like this.

To his vague surprise, though, the Quinzels leaned forward with interest. That removed any lingering reservations about showing his wife and baby off, so Jack started the video again and turned it so they all could see. He was grinning the whole time.

"I don't know who Susie was calling Daddy," he said after the video had finished.

Janet laughed. "Who's the only man Susie wants to be her father?" she asked. "Think hard."

He gave her a scrunched-up look. "I keep telling her, I'm not her dad."

"But you are," Abraham said. "This is your sister, yes?" Janet nodded. "You're her foster father, then, which makes you her father."

"But I'm not really ---"

"To a child that young, you are." Marni was smiling. "Are you okay with baby supplies? Clothes, diapers, bedding . . .?"

Jack shrugged. "Yeah, I think so. Rachel goes on a shopping spree about once a week, and some friends of ours have a baby girl, so they've given us some stuff. Oh, here, this is the Mitzi-thing." He pulled up some pictures of Mitzi that he'd snapped and passed the phone around. "Isn't it ugly?"

"If by ugly, you mean absolutely adorable," Marni remarked. "Then yes, she's hideous."

Jack grinned again. "So, her first words went 'da-da,' 'ma-ma,' and 'Ja-Ja.' Kid loves me. I'm teaching it to be a criminal mastermind and take over a small country."

"As you can see," Janet offered, "Jack hates kids."

"Of course I do. Minions aren't kids, though. Quiet, minion," he ordered when she opened her mouth again. The conversation drifted for a while after that, with only a few moments of awkwardness for Jack and the Quinzels.

Once dinner was finished and they were pulling their coats on in the lobby, Abraham pulled Jack to the side and cleared his throat. "Jack, Marni and I . . . we're glad that you're doing so well." He held his hand up to keep Jack silent. "I want you to know that we don't hate you, we don't blame you for Harleen's death, and we're not upset that you and Rachel are starting a family. Please don't worry about any of that."

Jack's lips twisted as he scratched the back of his head. "Was it that obvious?"

Abraham's eyes crinkled even more as he smiled. "Just a little. If you need anything, please let us know. I know we have no business being a part of your life, but . . . we'd like to be. I know Harleen would want us to."

Jack looked at him for a long moment before he smiled slightly. "Thank you. I'll talk with Rachel; I think she'd like that." Let them substitute Rachel and Ava for Harleen and the grandchild they'd never gotten. It would be good for everyone.

"Thank you. Here's our number if you ever need anything." He handed Jack a slip of paper and the younger man took it with a nod. "Have a good weekend, Jack."

"I will. You, too." Abraham smiled and went back to his wife, who was also smiling at Jack as he returned to his own group. He threw his jacket over Janet's shoulders as she shivered and hugged her close. "We ready to go? I'm tired."

"Yeah. Are you okay?" Bruce wanted to know as his limo finally pulled up to the curb.

"I'm fine," Jack replied. He handed Janet in, then settled next to her and tugged at her hair. "Rachel's gonna ground you for dyeing your hair without permission."

"Grow up," he was told, which prompted laughter from everyone. "I'm only being nice to you so you'll take me to this concert, you know."

"Naw, you love me, you know you do." Janet flushed and looked away with a snort, which made Jack grin broadly. Even smooching on Hayden hadn't diminished her crush on him. Hot damn, he was a stud. That made Jack start laughing as he took his phone out to watch Rachel's video again.

***

"--- so, they want us to call them," he finished later, laying on his stomach on the bed in the guest room Bruce had given him. Strangely, it was quite a ways away from Janet's.

"Are you okay with it?" Rachel wanted to know.

"Actually, yeah. I mean, they never got grandkids, y'know? I'm not . . . I don't just feel sorry for them. I mean . . . oh, hell, look, they'll enjoy it, Ava will get more grandparents . . . yeah, I'm good with it. If you are, I mean. I suppose it'd be a little odd to have the parents of your husband's dead first wife hanging around . . ."

"No, I think it's a great idea," she assured him. "I've been feeling bad because we only have Mom . . . I'm just stuck on kids needing more than one grandparent, I guess."

"It's traditional," Jack reasoned. He was plucking at the blankets and sighed. "Hell, what do I know. My folks are probably dead, and good riddance to my sperm donor."

Rachel was quiet for a while, and when she spoke, it was soft. "What about your mother?"

He rolled his eyes as his chest clenched minutely. "I told you, I don't know. She split really early on and didn't bother taking me. If the woman's still alive, I really don't want to know."

"Maybe she didn't have a choice," Rachel offered gently.

"A choice? Not to take her kid out of a potentially deadly situation? What would you do, Rachel?"

"I don't know the circumstances. But I'd do my best to get Ava away from someone who was hurting us. And maybe she tried."

Jack scoffed. "Right. She tried really hard, I can tell. I don't wanna talk about this, popsicle. I really don't. Why's Susie calling me Daddy?"

"Because you're her foster father. She was so excited when she figured it out today." Rachel next silence was hesitant and probing.

Jack sighed. "What do you want?"

"Well . . . if Mary's not found, if she dies . . . these girls aren't going to have anyone, Jack. Them staying with us is only temporary, and they'll be shuffled through the foster system as wards of the state until they're eighteen. I don't want to put them through that, not when we can take care of them, love them . . . because you do love them, Jack, and you know it."

Jack was quiet as he rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. He thought he knew, but . . . "So what do you want to do?"

Rachel was quiet for a moment, too. "If Mary dies, I'd like to . . . if you want to . . . adopt them. I mean, we'll need to talk this over more when you get home, but . . . just off the top of your head, what do you think?"

His eyes closed and he took deep, even breaths as he thought about it. More links back, certainly, that's what planning to adopt his girls would be. And Mary was most certainly not making it back alive. And even though he complained about it all the time, Jack liked it when Susie called him Daddy. It flew in the face of what was telling him he'd be a terrible father, that no one would ever love him or want to be near him. It gave him hope that Ava would love him that much, too.

"Jack? Are you there?"

"Yeah," he muttered. "Just thinking."

"And?"

". . . if they need a home, we'll keep them. I don't mind."

"I love you, Jack," Rachel whispered.

"See? That's why I do these things, for the affection." He turned on his side with a smile. "And . . ."

"Yes?"

"When you got back from California . . . you stopped me from giving you my answer, but . . . it was yes." She took in a shaky breath and sniffed, which made Jack want to hold her tightly. He squeezed a pillow, instead.

"Jack . . . I . . ." Rachel was crying, now, but he knew they were happy tears.

"Probably should have told you anyway, but I'm an admitted moron. And . . . I was more upset that I hadn't been able to tell you yes before you got pregnant. That's what made me so mad for so long. Hey, are you okay? Baby?"

"I'm fine," she whispered. "I love you so much, Jack. Ava's never going to know how lucky she is to have a father like you."

"Oh, she will, the first time she needs me to scare some pesky boy away for her." That made Rachel laugh and Jack chuckled along with her. "Uh, you want me to talk with Janet? Run the whole adoption thing by her, see how she'd feel about it?"

"You don't want to talk about it more?"

"If it comes down to us or the foster system, they're staying with us," he said firmly.

"Okay. Talk with her if you want." Then she yawned.

"Get some sleep," Jack said. "Lemme talk to Ava." He waited while Rachel laughed, then put the phone to her stomach. "Hey, sweety, it's Daddy. You're being good, right? I miss you, but I'll be home soon. Good night, precious."

"She heard you," Rachel said a few moments later. "She kicked a bit."

Jack grinned. "Good. Have a good night, Rachel."

"You, too. I love you." They hung up a moment later, and Jack snuggled under the covers with a huge smile on his face.