4. A family member of my muse was just killed. Your muse is there to comfort them.
Remy dragged on his cigarette, the tip glowing brighter for a few moments. He had been raised in trouble, and he had always known what sort of fate awaited those that lived that way. A bullet to the face was a pretty grim reminder.
He stood outside the funeral home, having used the excuse of needing a smoke to go outside. His father had called him with the news and told him rather bluntly what had to be done. Jean-Luc LeBeau had never been one to panic.
"You’ll have to go to de hospital an’ get Henri’s things," Jean-Luc had said calmly. "Y’can identify de body, Remy. It’s safer for y’to do it. Henri’s got some assets dat need cleaned up."
Henri LeBeau had been his brother since Remy was ten. Which— yeah— on the face of things meant they were never really as close as they could of been. Henri had already been twenty-one then, and twenty-one was the legal age of hitting the bars and having a grand old time with youth. There was not a lot of time for an adopted ten-year-old.
Sometimes there would be a job that Jean-Luc let the two of them go on. Remy had already proved himself slippery enough, and while Henri took it upon himself to be the guardian of his new little brother, he was gratified to find the boy could handle himself most of the time. Henri didn’t want to watch a snotty new kid, especially a mutant one the others thieves referred to as ‘le diable blanc’. He just had a keen sense of clan duty.
Henri had always been the dutiful LeBeau. Remy was the one that would roll around with women and fall down drunk somewhere or blow something up. Henri would do all of those things, but not so you’d notice. He was the image of the cool and collected thief, a planner, like his father. When Henri pulled out a gun, things were going to get fucked up.
But now he was the one that was dead, and Remy was picking up his things and emptying bank accounts. Henri had several flats that needed cleared, bills that needed payed, his body needed identified, he needed the funeral arrangements made. It was surprising how much paper went through after someone died. Remy and Henri had always gotten each other out of scrapes and cleaned up each other’s messes, not Jean-Luc. It was only natural that Remy would be the one to bury himself in polishing off Henri LeBeau’s last chapter.
It was the damn Assassins. Part of Remy felt it was his fault the guilds were at war. If he had settled down with Bella Donna and never killed that fool brother things could have turned out differently. But now Henri was dead as well, and he wondered if his father blamed him. Jean-Luc hadn’t called after telling him the news. Maybe he’d see him at the funeral.
It wasn’t fair to Sarah to have been dragged into this. It had been impossible not to tell her when they had been interupted. It was the sort of thing Remy needed time to comprehend, and she had been the nearest person to talk to.
He busied himself for a couple days afterwards, and then they met again, several hours before the mass. The LeBeaus were a respectable family to those who didn’t know where their money came from, and of course there would be a sizable number of attendees, of both those that had liked and hated the dead man. Remy had just seen the body once more; he was glad they had shaved him but left the moustache. He had never remembered seeing Henri without a moustache his entire life.
Remy had seldom been seen ever since Henri died without a cigarette. Otherwise he outwardly seemed unaffected, and for once Sarah saw him outside of the perpetual trenchcoat and gloves. Today for once Remy was in a freshly pressed tuxedo, though he hung onto the sunglasses that he typically wore in the daytime and ended up resembling something like a security agent loitering outside the door.
"Nice of y’to come, chère. Mais, it’s not what I originally planned for a date. Bars, bayou…. funerals. Not de best track record, non?”
