You’d seen some wild things in your life—time travel, Brainiac trying yoga, Batman singing karaoke—but nothing, nothing, could’ve prepared you for co-parenting a Martian bird-boy, Shayne and a daughter, Mia, she got with her high school ex.

“Shayne, for the last time,” you said, clutching your coffee like it owed you rent, “you cannot phase through the fridge to grab cookies when you’re grounded.”

“But you said we should respect the rules of gravity and consequence,” Shayne pouted, arms crossed, wings twitching in protest. “I’m respecting both.”

From across the tiny kitchen of your dimensionally-leveled apartment, Kendra Saunders groaned without looking up from her coffee. “You’re raising a philosopher.”

“I thought we were raising him together,” you said, too quickly, too defensively.

Kendra shot you a look. Not hostile. Just… tired. She always looked tired these days. Tired of you. Tired of parenting. Tired of the fact your son occasionally levitated in his sleep.

You cleared your throat and turned back to Mia, who was calmly making her homeworks, and not speaking with girlfriends on the phone. She look up at Shayne and sigh. “Get out of the fridge, buddy. Please.”

“You're not my real sister,” Shayne mumbled in half-Martian. You had no idea what he said exactly, but you felt the sting in Mia's soul.

Kendra raised a brow. “Technically… she is.”

Yeah.

That was the thing.

A few weeks ago—give or take an alternate timeline—you and Kendra had gotten pulled into the Sixth Dimension by a cosmic librarian with too many teeth. You met future-you and future-her. They were mature. Battle-scarred. Clearly in love. Had a kid. A weirdly well-adjusted, polite Martian bird-boy named Shayne J'onzz who called both of you “mom” and “dad” like it wasn’t the weirdest sentence in the multiverse.

Then your future selves died heroically.

And you two inherited their kid.

Because fate.

Then, two weeks later, Mia, came back in Kendra's life, since her ex was in jail. So she got the full guard.

Now? You're awkwardly parenting a half-Martian kid who has Kendra’s wings, and a smartass teenager girl with your sarcasm, and the emotional control of a stressed-out squid,.

“How was school?” Kendra asked flatly.

Shayne shrugged. “Mild psychic violence.” "Boring." Mia said, on her phone.

“Good,” she nodded. “Better than last week.”

You scratched the back of your neck. “Look… we’re doing okay, right?”

She looked at you again. “As co-parents? Maybe. As exes? Still a crime against cosmic decency.”

You winced. “Yeah. Sorry for calling your wings ‘aggressively symbolic’ during that fight on Thanagar.”

“Sorry for throwing a mace at your head,” she muttered.

“You missed on purpose.”

“Did I?”

That earned her a smirk.

The two of you sat there for a moment, sipping your caffeine, watching Shayne float upside down while rearranging all the magnets on the fridge into the words LOVE IS A LIE, while Mia corrected the mispells.

“Is this what family feels like?” Shayne asked, rotating lazily.

You and Kendra looked at each other.

“I guess?” you offered.

“More like reluctant parallel trauma management,” Kendra added.

Mia shrugged. “Cool.”

Then Shayne phased into his room through the ceiling.

You stared up at the hole he left.

Kendra didn’t blink. “You’re fixing that.”

“Physically or emotionally?”

“Both.”

A pause.

“…So,” you said, staring into your coffee like it could save you, “do you think he’ll eventually stop calling Superman ‘Cousin Glowy McPunch’?”

“No,” Mia said flatly.

You both sighed in unison.

It wasn’t ideal.

It wasn’t normal.

But it was yours.

You, Kendra Saunders—your brilliant, angry, winged ex—, Mia—your stepdaughter in teenager's crisis—and a half-Martian timeline-orphan who called you dad between identity crises and anti-gravity burps.

Co-parenting never looked so weird.

Or felt so real.