RP:If It Ain't Broke...What Is It?

This is a Bard's Guild RP.

Part of the Vakmatharas' Jar Arc

Summary: The Vanishings in Cenril have claimed many people. The newspapers are publishing testimonies about loved ones gone as if they'd died but no new information has been released on how they've vanished or where they've gone. Hudson and Alvina attend a scheduled clinic visit to check up on their newest addition, only to find that he's been claimed by the event as well.

Outside The Cenril Clinic

It’s been almost a week now since Emily vanished. Alvina hadn’t been sleeping well, she’d turned into something of a ghost that wandered the estate in the midnight, moonlit hours. Her hands always pressed on her stomach, waiting for that phantom kick to remind her that she was alive. It had been a few days since she’d felt it last, she could say how many, because she’d lost time in her grief for Emily and Kam and any of the others that had suffered this disappearing act. This odd magic that stole them from their homes. The papers weren’t declaring any solution, but broadcasted messages about loved one’s gone as if they’d died. It felt a bit like that, the entire town of Cenril felt emptier or maybe it was Alvina’s imagination that made it feel that way. She was fairly listless unless Luna or Harper needed something. Otherwise, Hudson had the pleasure of dealing with a wife out of sorts. They’d agreed to meet at the clinic midafternoon. She’s fairly sure Hudson had business he said he could cancel, but she’d insisted on maintaining a normal routine. It’s just a checkup, no big deal. Just something to spark hope in something. Relight her passion and drive, break the cycle of uncertainty. They were parents. They were alive. These things were certain. Alvina’s dressed in her black sundress, the one she’d gotten in Vailkrin when her other outfit had been ruined by blood wine. Still couldn’t find that sunhat though. She’s leaning against the clinic’s front with her sandals pressed into the stone, near the door, watching a woman walk by with a cigarette. For no reason in particular, she wished she smoked in this moment, so she’d have something to do with her restless hands while she waited for Hudson.

Hudson is outwardly less disturbed by the Sudden Vanishing. He's been busy with Fitz and the campaign, formulating an appropriately mayoral reaction this tragedy, approving statements, preventing Fitz from wrecking his political career, etc. Hudson of course feels relief that the girls and Alvina are still with him, but he has trouble engaging with Alvina about the night of the Sudden Vanishing because of the wolf. There's a distance between them because of it, he is fairly certain. And even though they don't speak about it, not really... he knows her well enough to feel her becoming more brittle beside him. Maybe it's her fragility that makes him put his own feelings about the Sudden Vanishing on hold, to be the one who feels as if he must make everything go on as before. Fake it until you make it, etc. Even so, it's a bit like walking on thin ice, he's careful not to upset the supposed peace they have. Emily's things remain in the guest room, untouched. And he doesn't dare mention that he'd met Valrae inadvertently for work. (He tries not to think about it, but he does, a little, and feels guilty about it: it reminds him to be extra patient with Alvina, even if she's a bit of a stranger.) Anyway, Hudson had, as he'd promised, gotten out of his work commitment to meet Alvina here. He kisses her hello, he thinks that she's ambivalent to his being here now, but of course if he hadn't showed she would have suddenly cared a lot. He wonders who she's confiding in - because it's not him, and it can't be Emily anymore. Maybe nobody, which would be lonely. He's in the same boat. "Hey you," he tells her, touches her on the back to signal that they should head in. "When did you get up?" She'd been sleeping when he'd left for work. That's new and weird.

Alvina turns to Hudson in time for him to kiss her. She lets out a ‘hmm’ when he greets her because she’d been thinking about the time they’d gone into the soap shop and caught Emily’s husband with another woman. Her mind was flighty, her attention strained but she offers a small smile before this question about when she got up. She was defensive, felt like he was accusing her of not doing any work or being distant. Instead of arguing, she shrugged and pinched her lips. “Just a little while ago, I couldn’t sleep last night.” But that was always her excuse, when she came sneaking into bed in the early am with cold feet and no excuse. Even when Hudson woke up and she knew he woke up. She was pulling away, they both knew why. She wasn’t equipped to handle loss. It wasn’t in her list of traits.

Cenril Clinic

There’s no grace in how she moves through the door he holds open for her after she kicks off the wall and starts inside. “How was work?” She asked, to establish a conversation buffer she knew wouldn’t direct them back to how she was feeling. She’d become an expert in diverging the topics or Hudson knew how to avoid it. They were working on the same level, she’d have guessed, if asked. She signs them in. The normal nurse isn’t behind the counter, but someone else. Alvina gives her a thin lipped smile, wondering if the nurse had vanished or if she was just off today. That’s the kind of panic her mind took to in this short amount of time. When she returned, she sat beside Hudson. There are no other couples in the waiting room at present, which just means their wait might be a little longer than normal. She sighs, leaning her head onto his shoulder and listening to the whatever he has to say about the latest with Fitz’s campaign, her crimson hair falling against his shirt and down the front of his chest like frozen water. Stuck in time.

Hudson frowns at this difficulty sleeping his wife is having, but ultimately has nothing to say about it. "It's going OK, been a little busy with the Sudden Vanishing and Fitz having to respond to it and everything," he says, gingerly, because he knows that complaining about having to do more work in response to this event is maybe missing the point for Alvina. He watches her sign in and then she returns to lean on him like she could fall asleep again. He puts an arm around her. He thinks bitterly that pre Sudden Vanishing they might have laughed together about the absurdity of Fitz writing dirty letters under the pseudonym Miguel Reckless but to tell her now when she's in this mindset would surely create a ripple effect. Like she'd start wondering if she needs to worry about him. That's just another thing he can't talk to her about, along with his shadier activities, which don't stop just because there was a Sudden Vanishing. He decides to tell Alvina about the latest poll numbers, which look good for Fitz, and how the party they're planning for election night is looking a bit like a victory party. Fitz has his work cut out for him, of course, even just getting a handle on the number of vanishing is daunting. It's hard to determine who's vanished and simply away from their life - not all vanishing had happened in the presence of someone else. "I think it'll be nice for us to go to a party," he comments to Alvina. "Oh, that's us," he remarks a beat later, as she's called by the nurse. He stands after her, following her down the narrow corridor into the exam room.

Alvina can’t process the idea of going to a party with Fitz, but she’d tolerated him before. Maybe she could just have a glass of wine with Uma and feel less alone. Emily’s left a hole, for all her complaints, and Alvina can’t talk to Hudson about it because it feels like a non issue. She goes into her room sometimes, just sits in the mess she’d left, too afraid to change it in case Emily never came back and this was the last thing she had to remember her. A tomb to her life, some sick memorial to how things had been, once. Maybe it would always be there, haunting their house, as if she’d never properly left. “That would be nice,” she replies, in a delayed sort of daze that passes as the nurse moves them into the room and they start the now mechanical process of draping her just so and rubbing the blue gel on her stomach with the promise of the doctor in a few minutes. Her eyes are foggy, sleepy but also lost in another time. She’d only just yesterday unbraided her hair to wash it. “How is Uma?” Did he know? He would have told her if she’d Vanished, right?

"Uma's good," says Hudson, sitting in the Husband Chair. Alvina seems a little ambivalent about this process, compared to her prior visits, it's awkward. At least she's washed her hair, even though she's a woman and therefore somehow never sweats, it was getting kind of gross. Hudson wants to say: I think Uma's working on a commission to look into the Sudden Vanishing, but he feels like it might be sore for everyone - Alvina, nurses, etc. - if he said that right now. So he sits back and looks the part of a supportive husband, making small talk with the nurse while the proceedings get underway. Seems kind of ridiculous to talk about everything else but the Vanishing. But it's like they've all been briefed not to. The doctor shows, and even her sunny attitude seems to have taken a hit for it. She asks about their girls and it feels a bit hollow, and also... a bit like she's fishing to make sure the girls made it. Hudson reports that they're at home with their nanny, and the doctor nods like, tacitly acknowledging that they'd been lucky.

Alvina knows she can’t complain, because their beautiful children made it through unscathed but still there’s a nagging sense of loss she can’t account for. Like they’d been the victim of some thief that snuck in without their permission in the middle of the night. No physical trauma but the idea that they aren’t as safe as they thought. They weren’t as far away from harm as they dared to dream. Alvina’s dull eyed reply to the doctor’s greeting didn’t set off any unnatural bells. Everyone was a little listless with the events following the vanishing. It’s par for the course, the doctor herself knows all too well. The doctor urges Hudson closer to Alvina on the bed, maybe subconsciously aware that something world shattering was about to take place. “How have things been?” She asks, in regards to the pregnancy directly while they wait for the odd magical machine to start up. It’s whirls fill the room, it seems unusually loud to Alvina but in truth it’s very normal. Alvina flinches, as if startled and clears her throat. “Fine, I think. He’s been sleeping non stop.” The doctor nods, “That’s fairly normal for this time. Maybe less so for twins but…” The doctor is pressing the cold metal seeker against the cooling blue gel and her lopsided smile starts to fall. Neither Hudson nor Alvina can see the screen at this point but the doctor looks at Hudson with mild panic undertones in her eyes. “I see…” She says to Alvina, who is staring at the ceiling, waiting the monitor to be turned around so she could see the normal alien blobs and hear the heartbeat over the machine’s system. The heat beat isn’t being broadcast. All they can hear is the unusually loud whirl of the machine drowning out everything else. “Is it time now?” Alvina asks, after a long silence in which no one’s said anything, looking up to catch whatever glances Hudson and the doctor are exchanging, if any. The doctor, looking nervous, turns the screen in their direction. Low and behold, there’s nothing on it. Just the outlines they are use to with no contents. The baby was gone.

Hudson is watching the proceedings with casual interest, because he expects this to be routine, until it isn't. The doctor is reading panic, SOS, something's not right, and he gets off his chair to move behind where she is, looking at the display with her. He doesn't know what they're looking at. Normally, there should be some sort of blob that represents the baby, is all he knows, and there isn't one. He and the doctor exchange a significant look, wherein he bug eyes at her, as if to say, FIND IT. "Yes," he tells Alvina, sitting once more and realizing that he's started to sweat a bit. The seconds between this and the doctor turning the display seem to be drawn out into an eternity. And now she's sweating too, looking at him with that same wild-eyed panic as he stares into the emptied display, feeling a bit like someone's squeezed his heart like a sponge. Nobody wants to give suspected mob boss bad news like this: your baby's gone. He hard swallows. Hesitates. And then he says, with careful restraint, but a hint of menace all the same, "Don't show us this. Get another machine."

Alvina didn’t entirely get what was happening until she heard this foreign Hudson voice. The voice of a man use to getting what he requested. The doctor stumbles over what she’s trying to say, but stops as she stands to go ask the nurse to bring another machine in a voice that implies it won’t make a difference. Alvina’s hands rush to press against her stomach, still covered in blue goo and coating her hands in a weird warm rush that made her feel so much panic that she felt her internal organs protest. She wanted to throw up, wait no, she needed to pee. What the hell? As her fingertips knead into her stomach, everything feels the same. Her skin is tense, her stomach slightly swollen like normal, her skin pushing back against her. She doesn’t know why but she imagined it would be more like a deflated balloon if the baby really was...missing? She’d have felt something, if it had just vanish-. The nurse wheels in the new machine while the doctor unhooks the first and starts the set up. This machine also whirls coldly but it’s softer, more of a whispered warning that nothing will change. The door shuts, the nurse politely asks Alvina to move her goopy hands so she can rub more stuff on her stomach. She obliges and is afraid to look at Hudson in case there’s a madness in his eyes she can’t process. Something linked to his occupation that makes him someone to be feared, some remnant of the same wolf they don’t discuss. The doctor’s face isn’t changing, she hesitates again to turn the monitor around before whispering a heartfelt apology. “I’m sorry…” It starts, but all Alvina can see is the empty screen that doesn’t match up with the heavy feeling of life she still feels. “That’s wrong. It’s broken.” She states, flatly, as fire comes back to her formerly dull eyes.

Hudson doesn't feel embarrassed for using the mob boss tone with the doctor. This is his son they're talking about. What he does feel mildly embarrassed about is the itch skittering up his forearms. He tries to discreetly scratch himself. Alvina looks somehow both despondent and also panicked as this new machine is wheeled in. He's not sure that he really expects a different result. He hopes for one, but he knows, in his heart of hearts, that the image will be the same emptiness they'd all seen before. He hears his wife saying that the machine is wrong and broken, and he looks at the doctor and an understanding passes between them like a current of electricity. A feral awareness, unasked for, rises to his consciousness from where he'd long-suppressed it: he doesn't sense a baby anymore. He struggles to maintain a poker face, his gaze darts between his wife and the doctor. "Can we have the room for a minute," he suggests, to the latter, who almost immediately says, "Of course, take as long as you need," and excuses herself. Alone with Alvina, he moves his chair closer to her and takes her hands in his. They're a little sticky, courtesy of the gel. "Alvina. Baby," he says, trying to get her to look at him. Either she's purposefully avoiding him because she doesn't want to hear what he has to say or she's just hoping that the image on the screen will change if she stares at it long enough. "Baby," he addresses her. A terrible silence follows, he bows his head and frowns. Was this the Vanishing, or was it something else, a miscarriage, some secret that Alvina's kept from him? Why would she keep that from him? Is it awful that he hopes it's the Sudden Vanishing? He doesn't know how to talk to her about this. "I love you," he falls back on, looking up, into her face. He doesn't need to openly disagree with her view that a baby's in there, his tone says enough. "I love you," he repeats, "and we're going to get through this. OK? It's alright."

Alvina’s watching the doctor leave, demanding some different answer with her eyes. When Hudson approaches her, she’s not consciously avoiding his gaze...but she is. If she looks into his face and confirms the worst possible scenario, she’ll have to accept it. If she doesn’t look, she can keep up this illusion of technical difficulties and pretend everything is just how it had been before the vanishing. Out of time and space, just a safe place where she’s pregnant and Emily is just out with a new boyfriend and nothing is wrong. He keeps calling her and she keeps ignoring him, refusing to accept this as a situation they have to deal with. It’s too hard, she can’t again. “I love you too,” She says in a rushed, anxious voice that implies she is responding automatically to keep him from expanding on this conversation. Look, see? It’s fine. She didn’t need a witch to help her through this. She didn’t need Valrae to make children possible. She could do it on her own, if she believed. If she tried hard enough. “We will,” she reassured him, in a tone that suggests there’s nothing to get through. It’s an error, and she’ll find a way to correct it without magic. She won’t fold in on herself as she had so many time before in times of tragedy. Her heart is breaking but she can’t hear the pieces are they crack, splintering like glass in her chest. Her eyes sting and her face itches, her sticky hands reach up to find tears she didn’t know she was crying. Her voice sounded level when she’d spoken a few minutes ago, didn’t it? “Can you help me clean this off?” She asked, the nurses milling around uncomfortably in the hall in case they needed to be called back in.

Hudson makes the mistake of thinking that he and Alvina are in agreement. That she understands there's no baby anymore, but had needed him to tell her, like he had, without telling her. That's what it looks like: she has a certain cowed aspect to herself, and she's crying. He finds her a towel and helps her clean off, and then he puts his arms around her, folding her against him. He presses his lips to the top of her head. He reminds himself that their son is gone, but apart from being agitated with the staff for upsetting his wife over it, he feels dead inside about it. The news hasn't 'processed.' It will later, when he's alone. He wishes for her that he were different, that maybe he could be emotional in front of her, like it might help or something, but he just can't right now about this. He'll just hold her, he rubs her back. "I'll take the day off, we can hang out," he suggests, the words feeling strange and wooden as he says them. He can hear voices outside the room, the nurses are anxiously murmuring amongst themselves. He glances at the door. "I can tell them we need a second if you want."

Alvina cleans up in a mechanical fashion. It’s a glimpse of the long dead Alienvina that Hudson had so come to dislike in the times before. After the incident in Xalious, thought to be forgotten when a splattering of white paint on the clearly unaffected canvas. Her eyes were wide and red, like she’s properly processed the news but her body remained swollen as if it hadn’t. “I’d rather leave,” she says in a flat tone that suggests she’s indifferent about the experience. The nurse in the checkout explained how it would work from here out. There would be complications, pains...Alvina numbly tuned her out because this wasn’t how things would work. The next appointment, they’d find the baby back. Faulty equipment, no sense losing the entire day over it. “Why would you do that?” She asked Hudson, confusion screwed into her face like a lightbulb too small for it’s socket, wobbling around with uncertainty. Did it belong here? Of course it did. Her face was wet again, but she couldn’t place when she’d cried. Her palms wipe at the moisture, take the phamlets the nurse offers and lets Hudson guide her back out through the waiting room to the front of the building while she thought about the woman with a cigarette and hoped she wasn’t pregnant. That woman, she shouldn’t smoke if she was. “Have you eaten?” She asks, “I’d hoped we could get lunch but there’s a place nearby so you won’t have to take all day. I know how busy everything this.” If Alvina could process anything beyond her blind belief, she’d have wished the same. That Hudson would cry in front of her, get pissed and punch a hole in a trash can. Anything. So many other men saw fit to break down in her presence but Hudson remained a pillar of strength and decision. Her protector. Her sanity when the rest of the world failed her or tried to cash her out as just a ‘weak woman’. Lionel, Ranok, Krice...even Linken. They all underestimated her. But never Hudson. He knew she could get through this, or so she thought as they stood in front of the clinic, making lunch plans. He knew she could survive anything and she would. She’d make this right somehow, whatever was happening.

A Local Eatery

Hudson feels a strangeness in his wife, he hopes it's temporary. She likewise seems muted, to be removed from what's happening, grieving but also wanting to move past it. He is wondering again when the baby left: was he vanished, or did Alvina miscarry? He feels like he'd have known about the latter. Unless she hid it from him. He's confused that she doesn't want him to take the day off to be with her. He wonders if she's thinking about the wolf incident and is on some level grateful that the baby wasn't there. It's a disturbing thought to have, and he turns it over in his mind, trying to get a rise out of himself, but he doesn't succeed. He's too carefully emotionally contained, Alvina-focused right now. They get lunch at a place that they normally like, and he watches his wife eat like nothing's wrong. He picks at his own food, beside her feeling guilty for eating and not eating all at once. They've been talking about pre-schools, of all things, for the duration of their meal. "Are you sure you don't want me to take the day off?" he asks her, at length derailing this increasingly surreal discussion.

Alvina chews calmly on her typical pasta dish and nods. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m just going to head home and spend time with the girls. Let Marge go early I think.” In truth, she felt exhausted and wanted to sleep but she didn’t want Hudson to worry. He’d been a little odd since they left the clinic and she couldn’t place it. Like the name of someone you know, it just dangled on the tip of her tongue so long that she lost it. He was probably worrying about the baby and about her, being a pregnant mother and all. Her pale hand slides across the table to pat the top of his where it rests. She even gives him a little smile. See how fine things are? “You can if you want to though. I don’t want you to go back if you’re just going to worry the whole time.”

Hudson is at war with himself on whether to say anything to his wife. Are they not somehow on the same page about this? Or are they on the same page, and she literally ... isn't acting like his wife right now? Her hand brushes his and it's like an electric jolt. "I'd rather take the afternoon off," he says, impulsively, looking at her like he expects her face to spontaneously crumple. "We find out this news about the baby being gone and you're like..." suddenly it's all coming out, his forehead creases, he lowers his voice, "...I don't know, Alvina, we haven't been a hundred percent since the Vanishing, and this is a major development and I don't want you to be alone." He frowns, feeling a strange feeling that she's somehow become a one-way mirror with him, that he doesn't see into her anymore, she just reflects a self that she thinks he wants to see. "You don't have to be brave by yourself, you have me. I'm your husband, I think we should be together today. It's a bad effing day."

Alvina is listening, he can tell from how she’s looking directly at him while he says this thing, but instead of grief it’s still concern she wears. It doesn’t crumple in typical Alvina fashion. This mention should have sent her into tears, it’s the softest nerve in her heart. She can’t process it, it doesn’t make sense. The vanishing. Emily. The baby. Their son. “They’ve all been bad since.” She replies, thinking only of Emily and how she wasn’t in her room anymore. In the house. In the known world for all they know. “Can’t they use the detector to track down the magic that pulled these people away?” Always careful to avoid saying anything about her baby. Hudson will think she’s crazy but she still feels him there, doesn’t believe the monitors that showed her otherwise. It’s her body, she’s the only one who can tell. Maybe she’ll tell him that later, but now he seems fragile and she wants to take care of him in the same way he’s trying to take care of her. “I know you are, I love you more every day for it and a thousand other reasons.” Her husband, Hudson. Showing his emotions like this, just like she’d wanted. It’s endearing, her heart swells with love for him. “What would you like to do then? If we have the whole rest of the day to ourselves? We could go somewhere quiet and just be together or we can go home or anywhere.”

Hudson feels uncomfortable with the way Alvina unflinchingly refers to "these people" without mention of "our son," almost like she doesn't feel he was included. And now it's as if she's consoling him about what happened, and not the other way around. Her kindly suggestions about spending time together ring hollow. He remembers Alvina after that time she'd lost a child in Xalious. She wouldn't even brush her own hair. She slept all day. She certainly wasn't, at that time, capable of suggesting they go off and have a romantic escape 'somewhere quiet.' He drinks from his water glass to buy himself time and compose his thoughts. He feels very jagged about this tragic event, and she's being a complete alien. One thing's for certain: they need to get out of public and talk in private. She's making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end with this. "Let's just go home and send Marge out to the park with the kids," he suggests, signaling for the check. It arrives promptly, putting a welcome breather in the discussion.

The Landon Estate

By the time they're on their way home, Alvina's strategically focused the conversation on the toddler gymnastics course he's been taking Harper to on Saturday mornings. He realizes what she's done - diverted him - when he's opening the door to their home. Clever woman. He just spent twenty minutes telling her about child athletic development, and now she's drifting away from him to liaise with Marge. He stops into the kitchen for a beer, listening to them in the playroom. He gets the sinking feeling that Alvina's 'forgotten' about the plan. Is doing everything she can to stave off a private discussion.

When Alvina surfaced with Marge, there's no distress in her face. But then, why would there be? Marge and company are the last people who should endure an outbreak of the depression virus, otherwise their daughters would become nightmares for an indefinite amount of time. The girls are dressed in their rain boots, in case the park is muddy, and Marge takes both of their hands (one on each side) after throwing the emergency outing kit over her shoulder which included pre-packaged snacks and drinks and all manner of toys. Harper’s giraffe, looking worse for wear, is placed on the kitchen counter for safe keeping. Alvina kisses them both goodbye, thanking Marge in the process and shuts the door behind them before approaching Hudson in the kitchen. “ Have I told you how lucky I am that you are my husband? “ She asks, coyly, as if this was the plan all along. It's surreal, even she knows it in her altered way of thinking. She threads her hands around his waist, looping under his arms to press herself against him in suggestive silence. “Listen to you talk about Harper's gymnastics makes my heart race. Look at us, all grown up with children. Talking about schools and activities in our free time… It's everything I always wanted…” Her smile is razor thin, cutting the skin of her face in an odd way before she leans in further to try and kiss him.

Hudson is glad to be wrong and see the girls and Marge off to the park. He and Alvina haven't talked to the girls about the Sudden Vanishing yet, they've just said that Emily had to go, and the girls, being toddlers, had simply accepted this explanation. Maybe they'd have made a different choice if the girls were in school and there was the potential for another child to break the news first. As difficult as they are to wrangle now, Hudson wouldn't trade them growing up any faster than they already are. That's what he's thinking when he's left alone with his wife, and she starts coming onto him in the kitchen (!!!) and strangely acting as if everything's fine. He puts an arm around her waist and pecks her chastely on the mouth, which is his way of politely declining to escalate. It's unlike him, but this feels very weird. He searches her face as she presses up against him like a cat, like maybe he hadn't gotten the message or something. She's not used to him turning her down, usually it goes the other way. "Babe," he takes her hands in his, tries to get her attention. "What's going on here?"

Alvina’s facial expression quickly changes with this chaste kiss. In her mind, he’s just feeling low and not interested. It’s a thing that’s happened but only once before (if she recalls correctly). Whatever’s got him low must be a big deal. This vanishing thing. So the look on her face when he takes her hands in his is still one of sympathetic understanding. She’s here for him. “I’m just worried about you…” She says, her voice small and high pitched like the bell on a cat collar. “I just want to cheer you up, take care of you. It breaks my heart to see you like this.” To see you like this, like they weren’t both messed up by the strange events of the day. “I think, maybe, we are jumping the gun on how bad this is. I mean, it could have been so much worse?” Couldn’t it have been? If she’d been thinking clearly, she might have noted how morbid that sounded. Like their son had less value than their daughters or each other but in her mind, there still wasn’t loss. Only Emily had vanished, that she knew of. They were very lucky by those standards alone.

Hudson lowers himself onto a high stool by the counter. What is his wife even saying... this makes him feel crazy, except she's speaking in this frail voice that gives away that she's strained too. Strained and covering it up. This isn't like her. "Well, yeah, we're still here, the girls are here," he quietly agrees with that sentiment but he's shocked by the rest of her statement and also still not sure they're saying the same thing, or acknowledging the same truths. He remembers how she'd reacted in the exam room and needs to hear her say it, all of a sudden. "Alvina," he says her name, waits for her to make eye contact with him. His voice shakes a little, "...our son is gone? He Vanished?"

Alvina makes casual eye contact with him, wearing that same mask of concern in the silence that follows. What he says after appears to compute, her eye twitches and her lips turns up in an uncomfortable scowl, as if she’d been struck across the face without warning. “Hudson, I know you don’t believe me but I don’t think so.” She takes his hands, which are still wrapped around hers, and presses them against her still swollen stomach. “Don’t you think I’d notice if an entire weight was vanished from my body? Sure, he’s been a little quiet lately but those machines…” If anyone knew about machines, it was her. “I know full and well that they malfunction all the time.” She was clinging to his knee jerk reaction in the room as if it was gospel. Clearly it was the only explanation! The monitors were wrong! Not her body, her body wouldn’t betray them again. “Can’t you still feel it? That he’s still there?” There’s a pleading in her eyes, begging him to agree.

Hudson tenses with Alvina's answer. He watches as she holds his hands against her stomach. He looks at her and her hopeful face and for a second wants to believe too. But then the thought brushes against that part of his mind where the wolf resides, and he knows his wife to be wrong. Hudson's expression falls, and he shakes his head slowly at her. Feeling himself begin to tear, he takes one of his hands back. "No, baby," he tells her quietly. He touches his eyes and considers her. "No I don't."

Alvina feels a heavy sense of loss in this moment. It’s like a dark tunnel that’s she’s travelling down, with Hudson pulling the string only, there’s no light at the end. It’s only a deeper, darker absence. She recoils from his hands, taking two steps back into the kitchen cabinets, her face suddenly nasty and all angles. How could he betray her? “I’m sorry you don’t believe me but it’s body. I think I’d know if something was wrong.” Her arms wrapped around her stomach, protectively, as if shielding the child no longer inside from his father’s incorrect opinions. “We are going to have this child.” Her voice breaking near the end. “Without magic, without assistance. I’m strong enough to do it, even if you don’t believe me. I know it’s true and I’ll prove it to you, in time. And then we’ll have a health son and you’ll thank me for my perseverance. You just can’t understand, it’s not your body.” Even as she protests, tears well up in her eyes. Did he have so little faith in her ability to be a mother on her own? Without Val’s help? Without magic to make it easier on her stubborn internal organs that refused to hold a child long enough on it’s own. Magic. She didn’t need it. She could overcome the world for her children, hadn’t they done so before?

Hudson is cut by Alvina's withdrawal and tearful refusal to face the facts here. He thinks about Emily's room, with her things still everywhere, where she'd left them. He thinks about all of the newspaper articles he's read on the Sudden Vanishing, and how some people are holding out hope that those who vanished will be returned to them. Even if that's the case, he can't suspend disbelief long enough to think the fetus would make it. That's not even what's happening here, his wife is insanely insisting that the fetus is still present, when it's not. "What?" he exhales the word at his wife, who is so insistent and is now making him the enemy in this situation. "Alvina, the baby's gone," he tells her, even though he's rallied the words sag. Her strength of conviction is so strong that he questions his own truth. "Baby, you didn't do anything wrong," he tells her, stepping forward and reaching to take her in his arms. "You did everything right, this was just a tragic event that had nothing to do with you. It sucks, but we're gonna get through it, baby, baby, baby, come on, come here."

Alvina didn’t want to come there. In her rational, if Hudson touched her too long, she’d start to absorb his ideas. She continues to try and recoil but she’d backed against the cabinets and can’t move. She’s started shaking, little tremors in his arms when he moves to hold her. “You’re wrong…” she cries, eyes squeezed closed while she resists his love and compassion. Why she tunes out his soothing and tries instead to hear the imaginary heartbeat they’d heard once before. It was strong, too strong, she remembered thinking. The heartbeat of a warrior or a fighter. Their son, someone who would defend the weak and poor. Who would stand up for the unjust. Who would thrive in the life they were able to provide through hard work and dedication to a cause. Never mind that this cause was making money sometimes. They’d show him the right way, guide him away from their own paths. Maybe he’d be a blacksmith, like his mother! Her empty stomach had been full of so many possibilities, and now they soured and rottened within her core until she felt herself on the verge of being sick all over the kitchen floor. All she could do was cry, confined to Hudson’s arms, and wonder who was right and what was wrong.

Alvina didn’t want to come there. In her rational, if Hudson touched her too long, she’d start to absorb his ideas. She continues to try and recoil but she’d backed against the cabinets and can’t move. She’s started shaking, little tremors in his arms when he moves to hold her. “You’re wrong…” she cries, eyes squeezed closed while she resists his love and compassion. Why she tunes out his soothing and tries instead to hear the imaginary heartbeat they’d heard once before. It was strong, too strong, she remembered thinking. The heartbeat of a warrior or a fighter. Their son, someone who would defend the weak and poor. Who would stand up for the unjust. Who would thrive in the life they were able to provide through hard work and dedication to a cause. Never mind that this cause was making money sometimes. They’d show him the right way, guide him away from their own paths. Maybe he’d be a blacksmith, like his mother! Her empty stomach had been full of so many possibilities, and now they soured and rotten within her core until she felt herself on the verge of being sick all over the kitchen floor. All she could do was cry, confined to Hudson’s arms, and wonder who was right and what was wrong.

Alvina shakes like a leaf in his arms. Hudson doesn't say anything to her insistence that he's wrong. He is not wrong. As soon as this passes she'll see that. She is crying and he takes that for a sign that she knows the truth, is just struggling to get her arms around it. It's not been a good day. He runs his hand along her back, frowns into her hair. He feels hollowed out. "I'm sorry, baby," he is telling her. She feels remote.