Pripyat had not returned in the last evening as he normally had. There was no reason Jefferson would not notice this; the brute had a single eye with which he saw far more than just Valley and members with. The brute was in no way omniscient, omnipresent. He knew of his members' tendencies, their ways of life, the places they could be found. At night, Pripyat's was in the ranch house with his parents. However, he was growing older, and was considerably more mild and less of a pain than Addison when the one-eyed idiot had raised her, thus Jefferson could only assume he was still safe. Though worried, the cyclops kept to himself, reassured Geneva, and left their son to his activities.

When the boy had not turned up by morning, the cyclops had left just to scout out the territory, if not just in case. Pripyat's scent lingered in the air; he had been out and about not long ago, and in following it Jefferson climbed back up the porch steps to the ranch, wondering how and when the boy had snuck in. Geneva was not home, and upon entering, the brute heard his son calling for him.

"Just coming in," Jefferson replied, gently shutting the front door behind him and pulling the scarf from his neck. It didn't provide much warmth, but the scarred man liked it nonetheless. He shuffled into the room with the hearth, where the fire had not yet been lit for the day, and found his boy there. The Patriarch wore no intimidation in his features, no anger in his typical scowl nor disappointment in his green eye. If anything, he was... simply indifferent. "You didn't come home last night," Jefferson said coolly, moving to light the fire. "What were you up to?"

There was always a sensitivity in the boy's tone, perhaps one Jefferson would never mimic nor even attempt; Pripyat was his mother's child, and rightly so. The boy had spent more time with Geneva than he had with Jefferson at first, and though it had been months since the olive-eyed Savant and the cyclops had made up and she and their song moved back into the ranch, it still seemed as if there was a lingering distance between Pripyat and he. Jefferson knew himself to be a terrible father, or at least thought himself to be. He lacked the compassion a typical parent might have, though that was not to say he was devoid of it. Jefferson was not the type to much show his affection, preferring to keep his emotions bottled up inside much like everything else. On the outside, he appeared as nothing more than a fluid, slightly disjointed parent, but his devotion for his family was unyielding like the air in his lungs, the stare of his eye.

Geneva was sensitive, however, and such had been forwarded onto Pripyat. He'd been shy from the beginning, much taking after his mother than father; Jefferson had begun to wonder if he had any impression at all on the boy, but as always, his thoughts and opinions never left the supposed sanctity of the scarred man's tumultuous mind. At his response, Jefferson simply nodded, emerald eye glowing with the light of the slowly augmenting fire, now that it had caught. Had Pripyat stayed anywhere else, the brute might have been surprised. A majority of the boy's life had been spent in the lighthouse, and thus the Patriarch could not argue with the logic that perhaps his son had a warranted calling back to a place he'd once considered so safe.

However, Pripyat mumbled on, and listed a name that perked the brute's tattered ears instantaneously. He froze, eye hardening in sharpness with an unmoving gaze from the flame, his body stiffened, his fur stood on end. A moment passed and his muscles relaxed; the Patriarch breathed, pushing himself to stand once more. "Did you now," he replied coolly, though a slight furrow in his brow exposed more than intended. His words, however, were not worth restraining. "She's your half-sister," he sighed, scratching at an ear with his good hand, hoping he'd never have to go into detail with his son as to how exactly that trio of half-siblings had came to be. He paused again, his features softening, eye briefly scouring the boy up and down. "She didn't hurt you, did she? I don't know what she's up to, being here." And perhaps he had said too much.

Considering that, the brute breathed some relief when the topic shifted, though to a question Jefferson could not quite readily answer. He sighed, smiling slightly. "I don't know, Prip. I don't remember anything from when I was young, remember?" Had he even told Pripyat that?