"Why are you so surprised?" Schiller asked. "Don't tell me that, in your imagination, every other version of you in other universes has a perfect family, and you're the only one with a tiny little problem..."
"Oh, I see," he went on. "You think the situation between you now is because you met me. And if you hadn't run into me, you could have kept up a good father-son relationship forever. Right?"
Deathstroke did not answer. He did have some thoughts along those lines, but he did not blame Schiller for it. He just felt that ever since he had become young, everything had started going wrong.
He felt that the last accident had turned his life, which had originally been going fairly smoothly, into a complete mess, and Schiller had merely made things worse. But if what Schiller had brought up about his multiversal counterparts was true, then the problem might be far more serious than he had imagined.
Before this, Deathstroke had thought this was not really any Big Trouble. Although Joseph had discovered that he was a killer, his son was clearly not some upright gentleman who strictly adhered to moral principles, and he still had feelings for him. They could absolutely sit down and talk it through, at least enough to avoid becoming enemies.
But if fathers and sons turning against each other was common across the multiverse, then that proved the entanglement between them was not that simple, nor was it a problem that could be solved just by talking. So what exactly was the reason?
Deathstroke was utterly baffled. True, he had hidden his identity and had not spent all that much time at home, but materially, he had never shortchanged his family. He had given them an extremely comfortable life; when he was