RP:Old Mistakes Die Hard

Part of the The Dust Up In Cenril Arc

Part of the Larketian Fault Lines Arc

Summary: Hudson has just built a bomb as part of his group's retaliation plan against Larket organized crime. He summons former paramour Valrae to tell her that, thanks to Alvina being mad after dumping him, Josleen now knows about the man Hudson killed in Cenril, and Valrae's alleged witch mind control powers. Valrae is upset that this seems to have followed her from Cenril, where she had barely escaped being burned at the stake over it. Hudson consoles her, and they backslide into hooking up... in the presence of a bomb, as one does.

The Witch-Run Nail Salon in Larket

Hudson has had a hard conversation on the horizon with Valrae for a few days now, but owing to his bouncing around handling business, it hasn't happened. Also, he's honestly avoiding her a bit. Regarding the subject of this hard conversation, things were left so jagged with Alvina he's not sure he trusts himself around Valrae. They're just starting to be actual friends, maybe he shouldn't run to her the second things blow up. For reasons he won't ever understand, murdering a guy in cold blood helps, or feels like it helps. When their schedules next intersect, he asks her to come by and see him after the nail salon's closed, when it's just them. Whether advisable or no, he's been drinking and working on something upstairs, a bomb actually. It's a mess, but by the time Valrae joins him from downstairs he's three beers deep and admiring his work while the room airs out.

Valrae had been painstakingly painting tiny little carrots on the oversized and purple nails of one of Larket's more eccentric upper crust. She'd been pretending to listen, dark eyes far away but polite smile firmly in place, while the silver-haired woman chattered about her garden and whatever fresh gossip was floating around about the Queen. A very popular subject, Josleen. It was harder to focus on nail work after Hudson's summons. Somehow, she didn't think they would be discussing nail polish shipments. So, for the rest of the witch's day, her mind was filled with questions and her customer service was lacking enough that she was sent to sweep floors. Finally, Val found herself hanging up her apron, a really cute one she'd snagged from an open market that had been dyed emerald green and had golden roses embroidered on the helm but was now streaked with an array of polish colors, and making her way to the second floor. Her heels clicked on the stairs, possibly announcing her arrival before her small, "Hey, Huds?" might.

Hudson, mid-sip, glances up from one last triple check. Never can be too careful with a literal bomb. "Hey," he exhales the word and pushes his six pack across the counter island that's serving as a staging area for various tools, one of which is a bottle opener. "Yeah, it's a bomb," he says, about what he's making, since it doesn't look like drugs and that's what he's normally making up here. (Also, it kinda looks like something that might blow up.) He's been wearing some alchemist's safety goggles, which look a bit like a ski mask, and he pushes them up to his forehead so as to look less absurd while addressing her. "You didn't see it," he adds, and offers Valrae a weak smile that folds in on itself. He taps a forefinger on his bottle, considering her. Even in her nail salon work getup, of course she looks really hot, godsssss damnit, damnit, damnnnnit. He sighs in a rush, get it together. "I have some kinda bad news so I'm just gonna... here we go," he makes a hand gesture that's supposed to signify Leeroy Jenkinsing the situation. "You know how me and Alvina .. uh, well, she apparently said something to Josleen, her best friend the (expletive) queen of all of Larket, about you. And me. And uh, the deceased Jo Finley..."

Valrae approaches cautiously, eyeing the bomb situation so thoroughly she almost misses the unspoken offer of beer. Almost. Hudson's alchemist get up was somehow making the situation more ominous for her, so she was frowning at him like he'd lost every bit of his mind while she opened herself a drink and greedily tipped it back. She'd given a silent confirmation to his statement, the nod of her head combined with the shrug of her shoulders and the roll of her eyes. Didn't see a thing, legally blind. She wanted to lean on something while inspecting him, but wow, what do lean on in a bomb room? Nothing was safe in her mind so she settled for crossing her arms. Her salon getup was actually pretty cute all things considering. A wrap dress in a foresty green that complemented the color of her eyes and dangling golden charms and crystals around her neck that marked her as a witch. "Huh, wow." was her lame, underwhelming reaction to the information he'd just given her. She took another drink of her beer before adding, "Well, I mean that makes sense. Her giving me serious frost bite when I was doing her nails anyway... And why Alvina would tell her if they're friends." Val pauses in thought, tapping the beer to her lips. "But why would she just now be telling her? I guess that's not important. Better question: why is that bad new for me? Am I being extradited?" The witch seemed very unconcerned and almost arrogant, considering how scary that possibility actually would be, as she sipped her beer and tossed back her honey-hued hair.

Hudson grunts into his beer as Valrae puts together the pieces about Josleen's demeanor. "Yeah," he agrees, rubbing his beard, which he'd trimmed into respectable shape recently. He eyeballs her, waiting for her to start visibly worrying, but she seems to be calmly parsing through the potential damage. "I dunno but if I had to guess... she told her because they were hanging out and complaining about me and you came up, and yeah," he says, canting his head to consider how nonchalant she still seems to be about the circumstances. "I don't think being extradited. Look," he pauses, drinks from his beer, "I already yelled at Alvina about it, she feels terrible and says she was angry and that she'll talk with Josleen to move her away from the information. It's not just about you, either, it's bad stuff about me too. If I get wind of anything going on, I'll let you know as soon as I do, so we can... deal." His gaze locks with hers briefly to let the meaning there sink in. Become fugitives: great. (Isn't the first rule of being with a criminal NOT to rat on him...) "I'm very sorry about this, Valrae. Are you OK, I feel like I can't read you right now?"

Valrae finishes her beer. Her face is calm but her mouth is pulled into a small pouting frown. Her eyes are dark with worry but her shoulders and her body language was relaxed enough. If she felt like bolting out of the salon and out of Larket at this very second, and she did, it wouldn't be easy to tell. Instead, the witch just helped herself to another beer and decided to lean on something. The tool table seemed safe enough. Val really didn't like the idea of Hudson becoming a fugitive with her. It sounded glamorous and romantic, sometimes it had been when she was with Irenic, but mostly it was hard and exhausting and dangerous. And he was a father now and that kind of lifestyle wasn't exactly made to go with diaper changes. She didn't answer for a moment, just let the quiet open up around them, until she sighed. "Don't apologize when it's not your fault. And friends talk, so don't be angry with her... Not for me." It wasn't anyone's fault really, just a rapidly snowballing pile of strange situations that were leading to some sort of painful and abrupt stop... But where? "What happened with Jo... If anyone is to blame for what happened it's Jo himself. As he's dead, I'd say the dues have been paid so we can stop standing around feeling guilty." Val stopped her in-depth contemplation of her beer to look at him. "I appreciate you looking out for me, I do, but if the Queen and Alvina are looking to put the blame on someone besides him, I'm good for it. You had nothing to do with it and no idea what happened that night. Just like I told it and just like it says in the papers." The words felt heavier somehow, harder to push out, so she took a drink and looked away. "I don't care what Alvina, Josleen or the whole gods damned town of Larket thinks. You know the truth and that's good enough for me."

Hudson watches Valrae go to town on her beer and begins to suspect that she's just very good at controlling her outward appearance right now. It causes him a small twinge of pain, can't she be herself around him, aren't they done with secrets? For the record, he likewise doesn't want to become a fugitive, but he refuses to believe that such a possibility is at all likely. He works slowly at his beer as the silence sinks in around them and they appear to mutually deliberate the situation. He nods slowly at Valrae's pronouncement regarding the deceased. It seems strange that so much trouble would come out of killing the guy who threatened her repeatedly including at some point broke into her home and cut her hair while she was sleeping. "Jo was a bad guy and I'd put him down again in a second," Huds is quick to agree, though what Valrae starts in on next gets him shaking his head. "I hate this lie," he tells her. "It's not going to come to that, Val. Alvina's going to clean up the mess she made, get us a pardon or something." Said like a man who believes it. (He'd been more than firm with Alvina about how he felt about it, pretty much all of her neighbors in the fort had heard about it.) Valrae is still looking apart from him, so Huds drains the last of his beer before setting the empty bottle down on the counter with the others. He touches her on the arm. "Hey," he says, "you can be a little pissed off that this won't die already. I got your back on this. Is there anything I can do?"

Valrae couldn't help the surprise that colored her features when Hudson agreed with her. She'd always wondered if he'd change that night. He'd killed a man for her, and for their shared secrets, and maybe some of his own. She would always be ready to reflect that kind of loyalty, something that had never been given to her before, be it going to prison or disposing of bodies. But she'd always wondered if he'd had any regrets. She watched him put aside his empty bottle and listened to him speak of pardons without putting much hope into the idea. Her facade was more delicate than she'd have him believe. His touch had her carefully disinterested expression slipping. She was frowning at him now, her eyes pained and her cheeks pale. "I'm not." The witch answered honestly. "I'm not angry, I'm just... I'm afraid." The words almost choked her. It was hard to admit and harder still to be so close to him as she did. He was so close and so familliar. It was like being in her old apartment again, trying desperately to stay away and be closer and just... "I won't survive a cage again, Hudson. I'd rather die." There was a dark, panicked look in her forest shadow eyes but her tone was chillingly serious.

"I don't blame you," says Hudson, frowning. He's thinking about the Valrae he'd visited in jail, she might as well have been a ghost. He believes her when she says she won't make it if it goes that way. He refuses to even believe that it's at all a possible outcome. He's not worried about himself in jail, his attitude is the attitude of every lucky sperm everywhere -- he assumes that it'll resolve somehow. "Well you're not going back there," he reassures her, matter of fact, like he knows for certain. He steps forward, around the literal bomb that's on the ground, and puts his arms around her, hugs her against him. She smells nice, is warm. This broken winged bird thing always gets him, rips up the sutures so to speak. To be sure, the feeling is a bit like her old apartment, except there is no moral barrier really. Alvina's left him and while he desperately wants to make things right there, it had been her call to wreck everything and go to Frostmaw, of all places. He tries not to think too much about what that means, most of the time, he never can get a straight answer out of her (and maybe he doesn't want one). She just says enough to make him think she might soften the ultimatum but in the end the situation does not appear to be changing and more time is passing and they're getting settled, her there, him nowhere. It isn't just her. He's not compromising either, he's dropping bodies and waging war, no intention of slowing down until it's done. He has to start to consider that this might be his new reality (until the next time Alvina is nice to him for one second and it slams his heart in reverse). No, indeed, no moral barrier, just the generally bad feeling that he's drifting away from where he's supposed to be and about to make it worse. Man on tilt. His hand stirs against Valrae's back, he wonders how long this hug has drawn out, probably too long. Foregone conclusion long. It's like the end of a film, when you see the montage of all the actions in summation that explain why what's about to happen has to happen. It's just one of those things that maybe you don't see at the time until you're caught in the momentum of it. Willful blindness, maybe, where she's concerned. "(Expletive) it," he says, pulling back to kiss her.

Valrae's darker attitude serves as a good juxtaposition to Hudson's hopeful one. She wasn't sure what the future held but she was pretty sure it wouldn't be easy or pleasant. Things just didn't work that way in her life. His confident reassurance was little comfort even if she did appreciate it. Valrae was staring at him, just watching him quietly as her mind spun in the chaos of memories and worries when he pulled her into a hug. It was like turning a faucet off in her mind. Everything that was bouncing around in her head just stopped. Suddenly the only thing real was the way he felt around her, his smell and the quiet strength of his arms. There were plenty of moral walls for her, Irenic not being crazy and actually being cursed and still needing her being the biggest one, but none of that mattered around him. Somehow with Hudson it never did. He was the exception to all of her rules. She says his name, softly and almost as a question. He curses and it echoes in the new quiet of her mind. The trailing of his hand leaves a line of fire across her back as he pulls her into a kiss. Weak willed as she was when it came to him, the witch just tilted her head back and returned the kiss eagerly. It was familiar and somehow not. With everything between them now it was bittersweet and maybe a little desperate and definitely tasted of beer. Both of their lives were spinning out of control in lonely and impossibly difficult situations that were more than a little self-inflicted. Why wouldn't they end up here? Clinging to each other and searching for anything familiar, anything comforting.