RP:TFW You Realize You've Become A Monster

Part of the The Dust Up In Cenril Arc

Part of the Larketian Fault Lines Arc

Summary: Believing that she is trying to blackmail him into assisting with dismantling the witch detector machine, Hudson visits Valrae's home to threaten her and, if necessary, kill her to protect his family and empire. He realizes, very quickly into this interaction, that she hadn't been blackmailing him at all. For her part, Valrae realizes that he'd come to hurt her. She unloads on him, and before leaving in anger, reveals that it was she who hexed a pregnant Josleen.

Behind a Hemlock Grove (Valrae's Home, Larket)

Hudson is in Valrae's house, waiting for her. He had presented himself to Maude, who had hugged him like a son and let him in. He sits at her kitchen table. Actually, he's eating breakfast cereal at her kitchen table. Which means he'd gone through her cabinets and ice box. He could use a shave but otherwise he's clean, in jeans and a golf shirt, same old Huds. This maneuver is a little intrusive and familiar and maybe menacing in that sense, given their last interaction and because he smiles without it reaching his eyes when Valrae appears. He finishes chewing and then puts his spoon in the bowl of half-eaten cereal. He stands, gestures at a chair near him. "Please sit, Valrae," he tells her, holding her gaze. There are maybe many emotions etched into his features right now and none of them are on the positive end of the spectrum. He looks tired and serious and sad and also tense. "We need to have a talk about our last conversation."

Valrae stumbles down her stairs, the glossy wood cold under bare feet, with a storm of emotion in her belly. Her hair is free and sleep tossed, she's wrapped only an indigo silk robe tight around herself in her rush. Her eyes are wide and worred, unlined and doeish in the absence of her habitual makeup. The way she had left things with Hudson, and because he'd told her to wait for mail, had her mind spinning through awful scenarios of him trying and failing to break Alvina's machine. She slips through the living room and into the kitchen quickly, her face a mask of worry and concern. Seeing him at her table, comfortable and calm, soothed her rather than cause more concern. "Hudson? What-" But his face is strange, his attitude cool and unfamiliar. He asks her to sit at her own table, in her own kitchen, and she is so stunned she listens. The witch drops into the cushioned seat of her table and blinks her large green eyes at the familar stranger in her kitchen. "Okay." She says after a tense moment of silence. "Sure. I was a pain, I know." She looks sheepish but not overly apologetic. Val has no idea Hudson was under the impression that she would blackmail him, so she is blissfully unaware of why he's being so serious.

Hudson gestures that Valrae be seated. It's weird to see her like this, now. It's not what he'd planned for. Evidently she'd been asleep, and as a result the circumstances now seem intimate and that's not what he'd been going for. He'd mentally prepared himself to encounter defiance, but instead she's soft, yielding, a little bit too much like vintage Valrae. He's thrown off his game. A silence begins to seep in around them. In it, he suddenly questions the base assumption about their last interaction. Had she been blackmailing him? Because if she hadn't been. And he had told Alvina, fearing the worst, and Alvina had left him because of it ... He looks down at the table, his eyes following the grain of the wood. The moment of silence continues, as he struggles against that possibility and tries to re-center himself in the frame of mind in which he'd entered her home. "I told Alvina about that time we hooked up in the nail salon," he says, lifting his gaze to level it at her. He rallies, looks at her with calculated serenity. "So you can't threaten me with that anymore. I need a bit more to make the machine stop, but you're done threatening me, Val."

Suddenly, the events of the last night Valrae saw Hudson click into place. She knew what ever relationship they shared was constantly changing, drawn with paper thin lines that could go to ash with any misstep or whispered word, but his anger had been so sudden and so fierce for what she thought was a small argument. It hadn't made sense. Now, with him standing her kitchen and accusing her of something so awful it made her face twist in disgust, everything fell into place to reveal some twisted, horrid picture. Her golden head flinched back as if he'd physically struck a blow. "What?" She hissed, managing to convey hurt and confusion in her tone so well that she almost surprised herself. Abruptly, the witch stands. "What did you just accuse me of?" Val doesn't scream but her voice is trembling now. She turns away from him, presses her fingers to her temple and tries to talk herself out of any dramatics. After a few deep, steadying breaths she strolls to her kettle and fills it with water. Her hands shake with rage. "I think," She begins cooly, without looking up at Hudson. "That if you honestly believe I would be low enough, that I never loved you enough, that I would black mail," She spits the word like poison. "You... Well then you can get right out of my house and go straight to hell, Hudson." She had snatched up a giant mug for her tea, slammed it on the counter so hard it shattered on her counter and had her streaming curse words as blood ribboned from her hand. Val presses her other hand to it and looks up to glare at him now. "What you will not do though, is come in here and try to intimidate me like I'm some kind of errant employee your mind game. I am not afraid of you."

Hudson steels himself for her defiance, for an ugly conversation, for worse. He'd seen himself in his mind's eye doing something terrible. He'd asked himself a million times if he could do it, if he could put his hands around her delicate neck, or cut her with a knife or maybe a piece of broken glass. He doesn't know if he could. But he also knows that it wouldn't be all Hudson if it got to that. He'd be present but the wolf would be there too. The wolf can be trusted to do what it takes, the terrible thing, the most shameful thing. Has it really gotten so bad for him, his wife has left him, and he's dared to think about murdering his former mistress? He's actively thinking about it still. Except he watches this reaction take hold of Valrae's person and feels a conviction come to a sudden boil: he's made a mistake. She hadn't. Oh gods, Valrae hadn't. And he'd told Alvina, and she'd left him. She's angry with him, and the blood drains from his face as she says the word 'love.' So much for his poker face. He can see her anger, though her back is turned, in the sudden tautness of her body. He could be deaf and he'd still know. He doesn't flinch when she destroys a mug, a piece of ceramic lands in his cereal bowl and he very calmly picks it out. Val is bleeding, now. How did they get here? His jaw tenses as he remembers the scene in the nail salon. The scene that later mulched his marriage. "That's enough," he says sharply. He gets out of his chair and joins her at the counter, looking into her face. A long silence follows during which they glare at one another. He really feels entrenched in his obviously wrong position, is the issue. Kind of hard to be like, 'My B,' now. There's blood getting everywhere, it's ridiculous. "Gods damnit, Valrae," the words come out wilted, pinned between his teeth. He angrily sweeps a dish towel across the counter at her.

Valrae ignores the blood as she glares back at him defiantly. Too stubborn to back down, either of them. Her anger is so sharp, so burning that she can almost ignore the hurt it shielded her from. Tears of frustration spring to her eyes. She's just so angry, and worse still that she was shaking over the ledge of overwhelmed tears because of it, that she can't even begin to think of what it was she wanted to say. It all just tumbles out of her trembling lips. "I've never, I could never. When have I ever been anything but loyal?" The witch pulls away from him a little. Her pretty robe was being stained horribly. "I have been to bat for you again and again without ever... That's not what friends do and I thought we were." Her breath hitched. "I went to jail without a word. I was tortured, I lost a child.. Without speaking a word against you. I would have died for you." Her voice dropped to a miserable, almost accusatory whisper. "I would still." Her eyes finally fall way. Val brushes at her tears angrily and streaks blood on her cheek. "It's crazy! I'm crazy and you make me this way, damn it." She hunts around for a rag to press to her hand. "What do you take me for exactly? Have I not proven myself enough for you? Do you think sex is required to get human decency for me?" She's not running out of steam, just working herself up and trying not to keep crying in front of him. He still hasn't apologized and it hurts bitterly. "And what did you think showing up in my kitchen would do if I was?"

Oh boy, this interaction. Hudson feels it blasting away at the resolve he'd brought with him. What a terrible misunderstanding that's caused so much pain. "Stop it," he tells her, roughly, but she keeps going. Holy Sven he doesn't want her to say these things, some of them are unspeakable. Their shared history requires a lot of partitioning when they interact in the present, and right she's tearing it all down. This isn't the time to be ripping open old wounds to see how they've been healing. He looks at the floor, his jaw tensing as she mentions the baby. Her question hangs gleaming like a blade above the both of them. "Val. Stop," he repeats, this time without barbed wrapped around it. After that he is very still for a moment, his jaw tense. He watches her literally bleed, the rag is helping but she's still got it a bit everywhere. "I'm not going to answer any of that. Apparently we had a horrific misunderstanding," is what he says, slowly, after the pressure of their silence has built, seems almost suffocating. He lifts his gaze to hers. "I'm sorry," he tells her. Apologizing to women is getting to be a thing he's used to doing, and it hasn't been yielding amazing results. Sort of a poor return actually. "Val, I'm sorry. OK? I'm sorry. I believe you." A beat. "I was wrong, OK? You're right - you're a good girl." He feels tired, suddenly. When did his life get so complicated? He feels his spirits sag. "The best, I just... I don't know. This got messed up. Gods damnit."

Valrae has zeroed in on his avoidance of her final question. Through this wall of anger she's thrown up she's still piecing together what happened between them. The way he'd looked at her before, standing in her kitchen and talking to her like a stranger. Her mind wants to reject this insidious little thought but it's worming through her head and she can't stop it. Had he come here to intimidate her? Did he come here to hurt her? Would he? Could he? Hudson has told her scarce little of what is really going on between them or with himself. This misunderstanding has fed and thrived on Valrae's ignorance of it. He's told her that he thought she was blackmailing him, that he's told Alvina but not that they've separated because of it. But her hooking up with him was hardly the worst dirt she had on him. They had buried bodies together. When they hooked up, it was literally right next to a bomb he was making. She had been hired for much more than painting nails when she worked at that salon. If he thought she was capable of turning on him with Alvina... The towel she's wrapped around her hand has stopped most of her bleeding now. He's apologizing, looking deflated and tired and really similar to the day he'd shown up in her apartment and told her Alvina was pregnant and he was leaving her. She can feel this chipping away at the anger she's thrown around herself like a shield. Her face changes, softens to miserable and hurt. The kettle starts to scream. Valrae moves to take it off the fire but doesn't really feel like bothering with making tea now. She sets it aside to consider Hudson anew. "Could you have hurt me, Hudson? Is that what you came here to do?" She has to know now, even if she was unaware that how far he was prepared to go extended far beyond a beating. She has no idea how close Hudson was to killing her. But she's feeling so stupid, so embarrassed. Val has molded herself around him, made herself soft and yielding to be whatever he needed.. Until recently, she wasn't selfish with him. She didn't ask hard questions, she didn't demand anything because she hadn't felt she deserved more. Things in Larket had changed her, made her needy and a little more reckless. The things she's done while telling herself she was defending her people had put this dark weight on her soul. The witch has her own secrets to protect, her own demons to face now. What ever Hudson's answer would be, even if he continued to avoid it, Val offers him some piece of mind. "I made the effigies of the King and Queen. I also burned them and helped get the message above the crowd. I think you already knew most of that though." She searches his face. "I'm also the one who makes the 'Royal Pain' comics and some other propaganda posters that the resistance pins around town. I helped organize the riot at the work camp, too." Her chin tilts up the smallest fraction. She was proud of the comics. They depicted cartoonish versions of Macon and Josleen that painted them as clownish and made fun of their bigoted politics. "Do you have enough of my secrets yet? Do you need one more to level the field?" Maybe if he couldn't trust her, he could trust that he had as much of her dirt as she did his. "I'm the witch that cursed Josleen. Not the one they killed. "

Hudson can almost see the poisonous thoughts darting around Valrae's mind. Had he come here to kill her? (If necessary.) Is he a monster? (If necessary.) The truth hurts. He wants to sit down, because all of a sudden the situation feels loaded. She's going to ask him a hard question, the kettle's like a harbinger of an uncomfortable turn in this conversation. And there it is. The guilt wells up in his face. He exhales a jagged exhale that's meant to steady himself, he looks down between them. "I don't think I could have done it," he tells her, when he looks back at her. (Except he's not so sure about that.) "This is so messed up but I'm not doing anything to help myself," he adds. Meaning that he's chosen to be in organized crime, a man with secrets that he has to protect at all costs. "I'm sorry, Val. I don't think I could have done it." If he says the words, they feel more true. Valrae is telling him information about her role in the Larket resistance now, and he tries waving his hand at her to cut her off but she barrels through the stop sign. Some of this he knew or suspected, but at this last item, he winces visibly and draws an uncomfortable and shallow breath through his teeth. "No you didn't," he tells her. "You didn't, stop, just shut up, alright," he says, more forcefully, when she opens her mouth looks like she might contradict him. A brief but terrible silence follows, during which he looks at her and knows that she's spoken the truth. "I need a little more time on dismantling the machine," he looks at the trashed mug, the splatters of blood. How stupid it feels that he's delayed in doing this basic thing that literally will save lives ... because his marriage is having problems. "Alvina needs a little more time," he's too proud to say why, "she said she'd do it though."

The guilt on Hudson's face answers Valrae's question before any of his words could reach her ears. The sharp, sudden pain that reared in her chest colored the lines of her face. It almost felt like he was trying to convince himself as he continued. Her blood free hand covered her mouth for a moment, before all of her secrets fell out of her mouth, and the witch tried not to let the feeling of betrayal ruin her. She hurled her misdeeds at him like hand-grenades, ready to shatter everything between them so that nothing was left but ash and rubble. Hudson rejects the truth of her admission and it stings enough to make her defensive. "Why? Why should I? Isn't this what you wanted?" She feels calmer now, in a before the storm sense. As soon as she can escape she'll be weeping bitterly. "You have the power to destroy me now..." Her eyes are accusatory, "You always did." She crosses her arms about herself as he looks at her in this new silence, pulls her dark eyes away from him so that she doesn't have to see how this knowledge changes the way he looks at her. "Take all the time you need." Sarcasm masks the tremble in her voice. "It's not like people are dying or anything," Not entirely fair of her, but she'd decided to stop playing that way a longtime ago. The witch turns heel, golden hair flying, and heads out of her kitchen. "Feel free to finish your cereal," She calls over her shoulder, slipping up the stairs, and punctuates her departure by slamming the bedroom door.