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A young man has a good time with a pretty girl at a speakeasy, where societal rules don't hold as much power. But the depression hits. Plus, she was a white girl and he was a black guy, is there any future? (Also his problem, the gambling...well, those debts are starting to stack up.)
Then comes the depression. A gambling addict with a growing appreciation for alcohol does his best staying on the move (and not making life harder for a woman by saddling her with his pile of issues. Plus...the danger and the illegality of them being together is too great.
He leaves. They are both sad, but accepting as they can be.
Did she know she was pregnant when he left? Was it a surprise? Either way it still results in a sweet, healthy baby boy. Skin maybe just light enough to fool folk. She moves to New Orleans. Far away from anyone who might know. Her little boy will have only the best chance at life she can give him.
She only tells Alastor about his father on her deathbed. Tuberculosis had taken a toll on his mother. Stolen her breath, silenced her songs.
But she has enough left to confirm Alastor's suspicions about his origins. That he breaks the "one drop" rule by quite a lot. The hue of his skin, the curl of his hair... the way his mother talks around certain aspects of his father when he is brought up in conversation. (Few and far between, why should Alastor care for someone who wasn't there?)
But she wants him to know now. His father had faults aplenty, but had also been sweet, and loving, a flare for showmanship that Alastor had inherited. "He was also doing silly magic tricks, flowers from behind my ear was his favorite...mine too..." His mother says softly.
Alastor is still left a bit...wondering. His mother was a good woman, his father a stage magician, shiftless, but apparently kind.
What made Alastor what he is?
Because it isn't stage magic that he coaxes his shadow to life with. Real stuff he found, here and there, listening and lurking. His bright mind devouring any and all knowledge presented to it.
It's not the kindness of either of his progenitor's that has him stalking people, hunting them like animals. He'd thought his cannibalism days over thought. Until the depression gets bad. He's fine, but friends and acquaintances are not. A few years between fourteen and sixteen had been a bad time, his mother's health failing and Alastor still trying to break into radio properly...well, his mother knew he was a good hunter. She never suspected what or who she was eating.
He's always known humans are animals. From the first man who thought Alastor's mother was available to him and whatever he wanted because she was poor and he wasn't... his maman had looked so horrified when the man fell over, a fire poker run through him and ten year old Alastor standing behind him. She had sobbed even as she fixed her hair and clothes as Alastor' calmly slit the still screaming man's throat.
That guy was dropped in the Bayou, in the dark. The gators wouldn't mind.
As far as Alastor's mother knew, that was the one and only time her precious child ever took a life.
Alastor feels it fair, to eat those he kills again, once he starts subsidizing his friends larders. As usual, they don't know the source. (He knows Mimzy suspects, but also isn't likely to care.)
He does wonder if the hunter who gets him has a similar way of putting food on the table. Or perhaps the lamplight on his glasses, the tree behind him, the bloody body...where suitable horrifying enough for the man to shoot first.
He knows his body was never found. Mimzy told him. So he assumes he either fed the hunter or the myriad carnivorous life of the bayou. (In Vegas, the man who would become Husk is already passed out drunk. No idea that his son has been murdered or even lived to begin with. He has many a year left to go before he will join him.)
He thinks nothing of his father as he enjoys himself thoroughly in hell.
Nothing at all until he meets him. Husk had been just another Overlord on his list. He'd actually thought to leave him alone. He wasn't...like the others that Alastor killed. So far Alastor had spared Zestial and Nifty, both delightful in their own ways.
Then he'd heard that the casino overlord was failing. His lady luck plummeting. Fine. Alastor was a dab hand at cards and if the sinner was foolish enough to play for his soul, it might as well belong to Alastor. Thanks to his mother's stories about his father, Alastor has always had a small soft spot for pathetic gamblers
He knows. He's not even sure how at first, but he knows who Husk is the moment they shake hands to seal the deal of the card game. Does blood call to blood? Alastor has woven together so very many types of magic, many utilizing blood that he wonders if that's it. Or is it that Husk is a drunk and a gambling addict, yet hold the appearance of a cat. "Sweet as kitten" he mother would reminisce.
Whatever the reason, Alastor is almost guilty when he wins that game. Almost. But his male parent is...a mess. And really, it's a child's duty to care for their elderly parents. So owning Husk protects him a bit, from the scavengers circling the falling overlord.
Alastor never intended for Husk to know. It didn't mean much, in the grand scheme of things. They'd never had a bond in life. So Alastor fulfills his filial duties of making certain Husk never drinks himself to death (again) and stays protected from gambling away more than he has and Husk resents him. It's fine.
Then a rainbow loving demon princess, later aided by a pangolin obsessed sugar powered angel, throws a wrench in it all.
Alastor can't even tell you how exactly, he, Charlie and Emily ended up...together. One minute his was a recently freed from his own deal, sinister threat...watching over the hotel and it's princess with mysterious reasons. The next Charlie had broken up with one angel, started dating another, and he got caught up in it somehow.
He didn't feel guilty or anything for abandoning Charlie in her time of need just because her failing without him was useful, or guilty every time he caught sight of that golden wing of Emily's. He didn't d guilty. But perhaps he let the pair get away with a bit more than usual, and spent more time with them. (he'd made Charlie a damn pinky promise not to quit the hotel again without telling her. It wasn't even a proper deal but her large tear filled eyes and trembling voice when she asked were just as binding. He still doesn't know when romance entered the picture.
Needless to say, Emily had offered one day to try to find Alastor's mom in heaven. Since he always talked about her. Play messenger between them as she did for for the idiot snake and explosion girl.
Only his maman was not one to only get to write to her son. One day Emily came through her portal, and his maman slipped through right after her. Emily's scolding of her was so very much for show it didn't bear paying mind to.
He hugged his mother, delighting in how healthy she looked, his last memories of her as a painfully thin woman with a bloody hanky always to her lips.
Now she glowed (literally, being a winner).
It wasn't until later, when his mother joined them for dinner before Emily said she really would have to go back, that Alastor realized there might be a problem.
Husk, still depressed over Angel Dust had nearly dropped Fat Nuggets in shock, seeing his long ago flame come in. The scolding he receives from his mother for not telling Husk after things settle again is almost more biting than the one he got for being a serial killing cannibal.
Husk does not know what to do with any of this.
Alastor, deciding his father needs a distraction decides it's time to bend his mind and power to "rescuing" Angel Dust (i.e. ruining Valentino.)
That was a big mistake. Husk may be awkward as hell now that he knows Alastor is his kid, (though seems pleased as punch when Charlie and Emily refer to him as their father-in-law) but Angel Dust has no filter or shame and cheerfully tells him he can call him "mom" if he wants. (the now former pornstar (1) and husk had finally gotten over themselves and admitted how they felt)
Alastor is left wondering if it's too late to vanish for another seven years.