the last blues we're ever gonna have

This scar I can't reverse, when the more it heals the worse it hurts

Mateo's letter had certainly given tentacle-dad and regular? normal? default? dad pause, but then, Ronin and Remi had come to expect nothing less from their son. The Huntsman had barely been able to say the words let's not be too hasty before Remi was tugging on a shirt and sliding his feet into a pair of boots. Kissing away his husband's concerns (or at the very least, silencing them), Remi had disappeared from their houseboat and into the night with nearly as much swiftness as if he'd been called to duty by Ludo itself.

A little past what would be 3 a.m. if you were looking at a clock, but what was more colloquially known as the middle of the fucking night, a patch of darkness loomed outside of a certain botanist's little shop. Making almost sound at all and casting no shadow despite the bright light from the full moon, the figure shifted forward until it hovered right outside Mateo's door. A few drops of blood pattered onto the cobblestones from where the creature's cloak had presumably been soaked through, though if it was injured its movements gave no indication.

At first, the hand which stretched out was ghostly; long white-stretched skin was pulled taut over bone-thing reaching fingers. However as the digits curled into a fist, they grew human and solid, allowing the Lullaby to rap against his son's door.

REMI

Mateo

Had it been one of several other middle of the fucking nights, Remi may have been thoroughly disappointed by a lack of response from within the shop where Huntsman and Lullaby had once lived. Then again, said Lullaby isn't to know that Mateo lives in a houseboat on the Falling - or a great many other things about the botanist, in fact - and so he can't be blamed for appearing here.

As luck would have it, though, Mateo is having a party. There aren't any other people invited and it's just he and his plants (more specifically the ones kept behind lock and key in his laboratory), but it's a party nonetheless according to him. It does take him some time to meander through the shop - through canopies of plants and past rows of sleeping flowers - and when he does appear, he looks startlingly focused for 3am.

He also looks like a younger version of the man outside the door, fingers charcoal stained and shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, eyes tired but bright, curls a hopeless mess. At first, upon seeing Remi through the peephole, Mateo furrows his brow and does a double-take, before his announcement of "Papà!" breaks the silence and he begins the fight with the lock.

"Buonasera! You have come to visit?"

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

This scar I can't reverse, when the more it heals the worse it hurts

"Buonasera." The Lullaby chimes in response as he glances over one shoulder. It isn't for his own safety that he's concerned, it very rarely is, but simply to make sure that no one on Mateo's sleepy street had seen the wraith lurking in front of the botanist's door. But then, even if any of the disappearances were noticed in the following few days, they'd never find any of the bodies.

"Come stai?" Remi asks casually as if it weren't the middle of the night. If he notices at all the endearing resemblance between who he'd once been and the man before him now, the Lullaby gives no indication. There was a time when he'd have given attention to such things, but being a demigod had both limited his way of thinking as much as it had expanded it.

"Also, I should say that your warnings about the tea are...non necessario." He adds conversationally, shrugging his shoulders. Without his wraithly darkness to obscure it, the blood on the Lullaby's forearms and one pant leg are much more obvious now, despite his chosen topic of conversation. "We are demigods, so the alcohol and your miscele do not affect us as much."

REMI

Mateo

"I am well," Mateo says warmly, stepping aside to let Remi into the shop as if this is a true social visit and it isn't the witching hour. "I have been working with an experimental strain of Devil's Klaw. I have managed to grow a specimen that I believe will not kill you. But of course I have yet to test it." And allowing it to clamp onto his face while he's asleep may be a bit of a stretch, even for Mateo.

Closing the door behind his father, only once they are truly safe from the noise of the street does the boy soften, his shoulders dropping and his smile growing a touch enigmatic. Perhaps it's relief on his face, or sorrow - who can tell? "I did not realise it was so late," he admits. "Would you like something to clean yourself?" Nodding at the blood that he's pretended not to notice until now for the sake of outside appearances, Mateo rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Ah, but I put the warnings on for everyone," he says. "Even if you do not need them, if I skip writing the warning, I may forget for someone else." Someone who would be affected.

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

This scar I can't reverse, when the more it heals the worse it hurts

The inside of the shop seems the same as it ever was despite the overwhelming changes. Displaced flowers and vines that seemed to be an integral part of the apartment's structure now rather than just a feature blocked much of the interior from view, but even from the doorstep the Lullaby could see that his son had expanded his offerings significantly. "Well, they would not kill us anyway." Remi hums under his breath as he reaches out a hand to touch something before instantly thinking better of it. "So if you need a test subject...?"

The click of the door and the sudden hush that descends on the shop seems to remind the Lullaby why it was he'd come in the middle of the night. That and Mateo's subtle mention of the blood he'd rather sloppily gotten onto himself. "Sì, grazie." Not needing to be told where the sink was, nevertheless, the Lullaby let his son lead the way. What would have been little more than an intuitive act of parental respect for most, was Remi's conscious way of trying to respect his son's space and independence.

Clearing his throat inconspicuously (ish), the Lullaby tries to keep away from the carnivorous plants which have dozily roused themselves as the scent of blood. "Your friend...that man will not bother her again."

REMI

Mateo

Part of Mateo - the part whose personality has grown organically apart from either of his parents - is delighted by the prospect of a test subject capable of withstanding any kind of experimentation he wants to conduct. The rest, alas, is a thinker, despite appearances and attitude and... well, everything else. "Is this your way of trying to say you do not love me?" he murmurs with a smirk, because surely Mateo purposely attaching a dangerous creature to his father's face would satisfy the being killed by someone you love clause.

Meandering his way through the little shop and towards the sink he's installed to provide water to the (many, many) plants that now grow there, he grabs a clean cloth and dampens it, before handing it to his father. "Prego," he murmurs. As for the man, now it's definitely relief on his face, but he still can't really look Remi in the eye.

"Thank you," he says softly. "How did you manage to find him?"

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

This scar I can't reverse, when the more it heals the worse it hurts

Abruptly halting, Remi turns toward his son. An apology is already starting to bubble behind his teeth, and were it not for the smirk he saw on Mateo's face he'd have let it flow. Instead the Lullaby just huffs and rolls his eyes. "No, what I am saying is that if you wanted such an experiment to be done, I could always find my way into your laboratorio and attach the crab myself." That said, his immortality clause was not actually very specific, and Remi doubted if Ludo would provide much help in the way of clarification. "Maybe you should ask Ronin to do it." He adds with a shrug.

Trying and failing not to be aware of how low Mateo's eye line seemed to stay, Remi chewed at the inside of his lip as he scrubbed away the blood as quickly as he could. The cloth turned a buttery pink colour almost instantly, darkening to garnet as the Lullaby moved to try and remove the bulk of what was on his leg. "Your description was very good." He mumbled softly before the weight of Being The Parent got the best of him and Remi found himself gripping the edge of the sink and closing his eyes.

"This is what I do, Mateo." He said in a soft voice that few outside of his immediate family ever heard from him anymore. Glancing over his shoulder, lines grew between the Lullaby's sea-glass eyes. "And he deserved it, I made sure of that."

REMI

Mateo

There are so many things to say in response to that, but of course Mateo zeroes in on the one he finds most pertinent. "It is not a crab," he informs his father haughtily. "It is a near-sentient species of plant that resembles a white, decaying hand. It uses the 'fingers' to pull itself along." So there. "I will sent a letter to Dad and ask if he would like to be a part of it, then." And to that Ronin says insert GIF of Ned Flanders screaming we'll see, son.

Lingering awkwardly while his father cleans off the blood on his hands and clothes - or tries to, anyway - Mateo eventually forces himself to relax, nodding his understanding. "It is easy to forget," he confesses to Remi. Despite knowing what he was doing when he had addressed his letter to both parents, despite wanting this outcome in no small amount... it is still so easy to forget that Remi is as much a harbinger as he is the man who had once carried him through the Greatwood on his back.

"Thank you," he says again, consciously making himself own his part in all of this - for the Lullaby as much as for himself. "I am glad that no one else will get hurt because of him... And I am glad that it was you." A weighty admission to be sure, because they both know that, had the Huntsman come to Stormbreak, the perpetrator would still never hurt anyone again. But it would be from the safety of a jail cell.

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

This scar I can't reverse, when the more it heals the worse it hurts

Remi's smile is slow, such that dimples which appear on his unshaven cheeks deepen gradually but are no less prominent in the dim light. "Ahh, errore mio." He chuckles as Mateo schools him in the proper nomenclature and characteristics of the Devil's Klaw. Gods but he's proud of his son, if only he had better ways of showing it, rather than showing up in the middle of the night covered in blood.

Looking down at his hands, now mostly clean, the Lullaby sighs softly. "Though I normally use my memory-magic to create soothing vistas for those I take...I can also use it to determine the truth of a situation." He explains. "This is how I know I found the man who had harmed your friend, and also how I know..." Pausing, even the Lullaby finds himself swallowing hard around the knowledge of precisely what that man had intended to do to Mateo's young companion. "...how I know he deserved it." Remi didn't need to tell his son that the attack on Sohalia had not been the man's first, but nor did he want the weight of what happened to weigh unnecessarily on Mateo's conscious. The Lullaby was the demigod of death after all, not his son.

"How is your friend now?"

REMI

Mateo

Unaware of his father's internal musings, Mateo merely offers a raise of his eyebrows to agree that yes, yes it was, though the sight of dimples on his cheeks is contagious, and soon the botanist is smiling as well. Wiping his own hands off on his pants as if in a subconscious mirroring of his father, he finds himself biting at the inside of his cheek to hear Remi describe how he'd tracked down the perpetrator, his blue eyes hardening a touch.

"Stormbreak is a better place without him in it," he decides, stepping forward now that Remi isn't so obviously covered in blood so he can clasp his father in a hug. "I think she will be alright. She will heal physically, anyway, but..." He shakes his head. "That sort of thing can stick with a person." And no amount of making the initial problem go away can erase the prints it has left upon her. "I think you would like her," he adds. "She is a cartographer."

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

This scar I can't reverse, when the more it heals the worse it hurts

Immediately wrapping his arms around Mateo, Remi tugs him close and sighs warmly against him. He can feel his son's indecision and moral uncertainty about what had transpired, but his relief as well. And was there something else, fluttering amidst all that stormy blue and dark purple? A flicker of something golden perhaps?

"I think you like her." The Lullaby counters a touch roguishly, raising an eyebrow before leaning back in order for Mateo to see the amused shape of his lips. "You know, they used to say that when you saved someone's life you became responsible for them. Just as the bad sticks with a person, the good does too, especially in situations like this." And, if only because he knew the sort of whims that tugged at Mateo's heart and mind which made him liable to float away on any old breeze that caught his attention, the Lullaby gave his son's shoulders a soft squeeze. "Remember that. Young hearts always remember."

REMI

Mateo

If there's a flicker of anything golden in Mateo, it can appear and disappear entirely on a whim; perhaps it sneaks in for the merchant who makes him a particularly good cup of coffee, or a customer who compliments his flowers, or towards himself for purchasing his favourite dessert. Indeed, as Remi blatantly brings it up, if he expects his son to stutter and blush, the botanist instead offers him a grin.

"Well of course I do," he says, slowly for Remi's benefit. "I like most people, Dad." Reaching up to clasp the hands that squeeze at his shoulders, Mateo suddenly gets the impression that he's receiving a lecture. "So, should I... get her a card or something?" He tries.

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

This scar I can't reverse, when the more it heals the worse it hurts

Remi, looking like the gif of RDJ running his hand over his face sighs and furrows his brows for a moment before exhaling. Clapping Mateo on the shoulders in the paradigmatic dad gesture of welp! i tried, Remi just shakes his head. "I am not sure there are many cards for this particular situation." He replies slyly. "I suppose you could make one, but no, that is not what I meant."

Was this a time of crisis? Reaching into the wellspring of his own abilities, Remi tries to grasp for rescue in the hopes he might somehow teleport Ronin to his side to take over. Alas, nothing happens, and though the Lullaby would happily argue the point of what does and doesn't count as a crisis with Ludo, for now, he seemed to be on his own.

"So what was this about Talyson wanting to find me?" He asks suddenly.

REMI

Mateo

Regarding his father with his lips slightly parted, as if wondering what point Remi is trying to make and which one is being terrible at understanding, Mateo eventually resorts to another hug, as if that might tell the Lullaby that he gets it - which he does. He thinks. Mostly, anyway. "I would have done it for any friend," he adds, though, in case the conversation tries to steer towards friends who are girls or any of that stuff.

Straightening up and ruffling a hand back through his curls, he lets out a long sigh that puffs out his cheeks and shrugs. "I ran into him on the outskirts of the Greatwood," he says. "He just mentioned wanting to meet up with you, I think? Not in so many words, but that is the gist of it. He could not fly to the Cordillera." Because of the dragons, but that was in the letter.

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am