RP:The Benefit Of The Doubt Cont.

Part of the Through A Glass, Darkly Arc

Summary: After a blow out fight with their eldest child, Alvina and Hudson revisit the night of his alleged encounter with Candice Snow. Hudson, feeling off about the incident and wanting to believe other forces were at work, suggests asking Lanara for help with her Crystal Skull. He tells Alvina that Lanara has indeed returned and her skull has the power to review past events. Alvina, eager to believe her husband's innocence, agrees. Alvina will go in place of Hudson, much to Hudson's dismay, to ask Lanara for her help.

Landon Estate, That Same Evening

The Landons lie in bed together long after their children are all asleep. Alvina shifts slightly to make herself comfortable next to him, and Hudson strokes her hair away from her shoulders to kiss her neck. "I love you," he tells her. He remembers the thing with Candice, which feels like it happened to someone else, because it couldn't possibly happen to them. He wonders if she's sleeping. Maybe not, because she tells him she loves him back. He smothers a snort of amusement against her hair. He strokes the downy skin of her belly, his fingers grazing the scar of her c-section but somehow not pausing to perform analysis. "Are you okay?" he asks her.

Alvina’s too comfortable to move. Hudson settles around her and pushes her hair away from her skin to kiss her. Her answer is delayed, wrapped in a sheen of exhaustion from the day. She smiles privately, eyes closing with a sigh. She was tired but when he wrapped her up against him, she also felt...invincible. Special. The actress might have sunk her claws in once, but Alvina was already under his skin. In his blood and bone marrow. They were saturated with each other. Their kids, their home, their lives all one punch bowl of their union. Candice might catch a whiff, but she couldn’t contain him. No one could. Only his wife, or so she told herself, had the capacity to hold him close. Like a violent stray, she’d earned his trust and loyalty. She saw (or thought she did) the softest, weakest parts of him. Knew him, inside and out. How, then, did Candice slip through?

Hudson touches her scar and her skin jumps, goosebumps rippling out across her stomach and hips. She hisses a slow breath, easing herself back to slack. Harper. Luna. Luna’s face...blue and gasping. Alvina closes her eyes, pushing the image away. “I love you too,” She tells him, readjusting to face him. His arm falls in the dip of her waist, just above her hips. Alvina kisses his forehead, tracing a lazy trail down his jaw line, finishing with a kiss on his chin for good measure. “I’m okay,” she promises, though she doesn’t know if that’s true. He’d been gracious enough to hold her like this. But it didn’t scribble out the black mark that was Candice Snow. She still wanted to know -why- a proverbial mouse was able to sneak into their house.

“Baby,” she sighs in a way that tells him she’s saying something serious. “If you’re ever bored...with me...you can tell me?” Alvina cups his face gently, smoothing a stray hair away from his forehead with her thumb.

Hudson smiles into Alvina's hair. It doesn't occur to him to audit her thoughts right now. But his touching her causes her to tense, and he glances at her with surprise, loosening his arm to let her shift to turn into him. She tangles herself up with him and pulls close to kiss his face. He smiles again, without realizing feeling the languorous moment overwrite certain recent events that had hung over them like an iron curtain -- until Alvina speaks again and reminds them both. "I know, but I'm not bored with you," he tells her. "I hope I don't act like I am," and there he trips over the incident with Candice, but now that the words have leapt from his mouth he has to continue, pretend they make sense, because they do, except for that one event, ".. but I know I could tell you. I've never been shy about telling you what I want. We had a ton of conversations about our life earlier in our marriage. Maybe you don't remember them because they stopped happening – because we got on the same page." He tries for levity but feels it weighed down by Candice. This conversation feels very gingerly initiated, and he decides they're close enough in this moment, that he can't take the agony of slowly circling her insecurity. "Are you worried I want to sleep with someone else? I don't. I know what happened, but I don't."

Alvina knows the math adds up. 99% of the time, Hudson didn’t seem bored with her at all. She rushes to his defense, “You don’t act like you’re bored-” but in the silence that follows, Candice’s name hangs unspoken between them. Was that why Val happened? Because he was bored? No, that couldn’t be true. Why would she have messed up in her own way? What had he wanted with Valrae? To be a different person? What had she wanted in her time away?

She wanted to feel safe and valuable. Irreplaceable. She picked men who had a reputation for outstanding moral compasses and heroics. Hudson was the ‘bad guy’. He wouldn’t quit his dangerous, unlawful job when she’d asked. When they’d been kidnapped, or put in the limelight. When it put their family in danger. He was stronger, more capable now. She felt safe, had felt safe until Candice. But something bothered her about that all together. It was drastically out of character for him. They weren’t having any issues, they were enjoying the perks of family life, private affections and strengthening communication. Was he stressed enough to want to be someone else again? Was there more he wasn’t telling her?

He asks her if she’s worried he wants to sleep with someone else and she doesn’t know what to say. Maybe that’s just a symptom of what she’s afraid of. “I’m more worried that you just want to be someone else sometimes.” Alvina lets go of his face and stares at him. They were too unraveled by the evening, she didn’t have any barriers to lock him out. What Alvina’d always hated about Valrae was that the witch must have seen a side of Hudson his wife hadn’t. A weak spot in his armor, maybe he was too scared to show her because he felt too pressured to be strong for her. What made that woman so special that she was given a piece of Hudson he hadn’t shared with even his wife? What did Alvina lack to have that information withheld from her? It didn’t all jive the way she wanted but she couldn’t sort through those old ashes. She didn’t want to. She just wanted to prevent it from happening a second time. “It can’t be easy being ‘Hudson Landon, invincible mob boss and loving family man’. I’d understand if you just needed to numb that persona...and forget who you are, once in a while. All the people and things you’re responsible for.” They were mates now. The idea that he just ‘wasn’t into her anymore’ didn’t feel right.

Hudson had taken a gamble there hoping that they could, in the afterglow of the day’s events, talk more candidly about Candice. And it turns out they can. He watches her face as she turns his question about sleeping with other women over in her mind and then denies it being the case. "Who else would I want to be?" he wonders aloud, genuinely confused. Would he want to be a generically wealthy man, maybe having inherited it? Well, maybe, who wouldn't, but he's not passing his day to day life wishing things were easier in that way. Would he want to be middle class or even of modest means? Nope. He'll take the stresses of their current life: he knows them, and the reward has long eclipsed the risk that he trusts himself to manage. And perhaps even enjoys managing: the Wolf's darker urges find a regular release in what he does. Alvina elaborates to phrase the question differently, and he frowns, remembering those isolated moments when he had wanted to drop the act and be vulnerable. Some of those moments hadn't occurred in front of her, by design, because she and their family was part of his stress sometimes too. Whether he was a mafia boss or a day laborer, the responsibility to provide for all of them was real and perched on his shoulders, and it would be gauche to expect them to console him for it. Like it had felt slightly off to have Alvina console him for fighting with Harper over Candice. He shrugs his free shoulder. "I'm sure it's not easy being anyone. Except maybe our children," he says. "But I'm not .. that's not what's going on. I actually feel better than ever being myself, like the shoes finally fit." He frowns again. "I know it seems like a thing I wouldn't tell you I was struggling with, but I swear I'm not. I ..." he pauses here because he's unsure of whether talking directly about Candice is wise.

He decides to. "I've always been extroverted, friendly. Sometimes maybe more than you would like. But, you know, I know where the line is. Or I thought I did. And what I remember with .. what happened .. was that it was maybe a little too much talk, everyone was drinking and being stupid .. but when she came onto me I told her it wasn't going to happen. I remember telling her that and wanting to leave, but I was so tired, I passed out and I don't know, Alvina, I woke up really confused. I have to wonder how it happened. I won't insult your intelligence by speculating, but," he takes a breath, "I have to wonder how it happened."

Alvina doesn’t know if she agrees. Even their children shoulder stress from their flash bulb lifestyle. Stories in the paper, a bomb in the house, rumors at school. That much was evident when Harper exploded at Hudson. Even in their self-contained little worlds, there was backlash for their parent’s decisions. Mustn’t that be frustrating? Feeling trapped and at the mercy of your peers? Alvina wondered if being werewolves made it that much harder. They had to graduate through friend groups quickly. Even though there were other werewolf children at their school, it was the best in Lithrydel by far, and had a smooth transition approach for the rapid aging.

Hudson clarifies his answer – He doesn’t want to be someone else. Alvina tacks on a neat ‘any more’ in her mind and feels stung by it. Why did she amend it to be more hurtful? He goes on to say he feels better than ever, like he’s finally grown into himself and his role. He’s not wrong, either. He went from a drug gang to creating his own organization. He had help but he orchestrated it. He had his hands in multiple pots, but still found time to be a ‘husband’ and ‘father’. He could torture a person with a straight face and without missing a beat come home and scoop up his kids with those same hands. She’d witnessed it, with Val’s brother. And she was a wolf now, so she had no doubts about the bleak, bloody things he was capable of. She’d never admit it, but biting Meri had been so satisfying. Not because it was Meri but because she’d dropped all pretenses and lost control. Alvina gave into a bad, violent urge, despite her straight arrow persona. Hudson’s job gave him a safe space to do that in. He was completely and utterly himself in the life he’d built.

The conversation turns to ‘that night’ and Alvina tenses around him, bracing herself for details she didn’t want to hear. A morbid curiosity kept her from stopping him. Her imagination ran wild. What was too much talk? Had he openly admitted he’d sleep with Candice to that group of people at the party? Or had it been different…light flirting that made her skin itch and bubble. Candice came onto him. Can she believe that? He sounds so earnest. Did he really turn her down only to give in at the end? He must have blacked out, the events don’t add up. She flirted, he said no, was tired…and then did it anyway? So how did it happen? Alvina draws him close, shifting so his face fits neatly against her chest. She kisses his forehead with a frown. What happened was he drank too much, but he’s acting like that explanation doesn’t solve the equation for him. He drank too much…except…his werewolf metabolism should have kept him sober longer. Should have kept him from blacking out. Maybe he was just afraid to admit he’d done party drugs with Kanze. “You can tell me, if you wanted the full young person experience and did drugs…you know?” ‘Did Drugs’ was such an Alvina way of saying it but she didn’t know what ‘drugs’ one ‘did’ at parties. Especially not high end parties where people had access to literally anything they wanted.

Hudson can feel the bristle in Alvina, how her body's turned to glass, fragile and leaving her thoughts on display in response to his talking about that night. He knows she is wondering what was said, exactly how did Candice come onto him, how did he reject her. She pulls him close because she doesn't want to look at him. She asks about drugs and he says, "No," the word muffled by her skin, so that he turns his face slightly to say it again, "No, nothing besides maybe smoking a little bit while everyone talked. Nothing that would have knocked me out like I was." He'd had the same thought about his metabolism and drugs, though, more than once. He even remembers Candice having made him a drink. But his being incapacitated didn't make sense with the scene he'd woken up to. "I've thought about that though, like, whether maybe I had something without realizing," he says. "But it seems .. I don't know if you want to get into this. Like I said I don't want to insult your intelligence, and I don't want to inadvertently lie by letting you believe I was, I don't know, drugged, and it turns out I wasn't. This is what I want to look into I guess. Because it doesn't add up one way or another. Like how did I go from doing the right thing to being very tired and then somehow waking up and not doing the right thing, and then not remembering any of it." He sounds frustrated because he is. "But end of day I know, because I did make the mistake in the past to step out on you, that this capacity within me exists, which means I could do it again. And she is, you know, who she is." Meaning hot, famous, maybe a person whose notoriety and past hostile interactions with him might give her special appeal in terms of attraction... He can't rule it out. What's left to do after having destroyed her socially like he had, anyway. "I know it's you who I hurt but I still feel defeated about the whole thing."

Hudson can see through Alvina’s subtle maneuvers. He knew her well enough to know what she could and couldn’t stand, how she hid from what she didn’t want to see. As much as she didn’t want to see his face she didn’t want HIM to see HERS when she asked about the drugs. She felt immediately prudish and ‘uncool’ for asking. She wasn’t trying to pry, she just wanted to understand, and feared Hudson would feel interrogated by her questions. She wanted to be a place he could be vulnerable. Be whatever Valrae and Candice had been for him once. Alvina ruffles his hair, feeling the length of it between her fingers and thinking to herself that he’d cut it soon. How well she knows him. He kept talking about being ‘knocked out’ as if he’d collapsed mid-sentence and awoke to a scene of adultery. Was he lying about telling Candice ‘no’ the ‘first time’? He reveals the theory that he might have been drugged and her hands freeze in his hair and on his shoulder. What kind of drug would make you lose all sense of awareness but still let you function enough to sleep with someone? Hudson’s defense is convincing enough to make her wonder. He doesn’t have to think twice about how he’d done the right thing, told Candice no, tried to leave but never came home. His frustration seems genuine and as he goes on, about how he’d stepped out on Alvina before, she feels her eyes sting with warning. Don’t cry.

Alvina’s chest hurts. It’s depressed by a heavy weight. It’s sharp, panicked claws dig into her skin territorially. Like a child, afraid to let go. It huddles close to her, pressing and squeezing her ever tighter. He hadn’t just hurt her this time. He also hurt their children, but she wouldn’t say that. Couldn’t, truthfully. His shattering at Harper’s rebuke was hard enough. Instead she waits in the silence that follows, turning his words over to shake out a response. Words prove futile, so she squeezes him against her chest again. Maybe this time he could melt into her body and she’d protect him. He was unsettled by this, in a way he hadn’t been before. Before he admitted what he’d done once he was caught. He was remorseful but also claimed it. This he couldn’t claim with confidence and that planted the seed of doubt in her own mind. “How would we find out?” If he was drugged. “Don’t feel defeated, we’ll figure it out okay?” She whispers the words against his forehead, keeping her red eyes hidden. Why did she want so badly to make this go away for him? Why did she feel a pulse of rage at Candice for doing this to HIM? He was an equal party. “I love you.” She reminds him with crisp confidence, feeling him exhale with unspoken relief at the confirmation. Maybe Alvina could just…kill Candice. Not publically, no. Only problem was Alvina already had a reputation of being tried in Cenril for Lycan Activities. If Candice disappeared following the story in the press, it would obviously be the fault of one of the Landon’s. Meri’d worked with Hudson on all kinds of shady dealings. Eleanor too. Maybe Alvina could ask one of the women to investigate Candice. Follow her. See if they can gather more information about what happened. Maybe ask them, jokingly but not, if they’d agree to snuff out this little problem before it could spread.

Hudson lets Alvina squeeze him against her and isn't sure whether it's him or her who takes more comfort from it. Having considered together the prospect of interference of some kind, he feels relief, purged of a terrible suspicion that had taken root inside of him over the course of this news cycle, that maybe he hadn't done the bad thing he assumed he'd done. But he also feels blanketed by guilt, like this thought, now voiced, is self-indulgent, and if proved wrong, will engender within his wife a fresh wave of resentment. Now SHE wants to find out what happened too. It hadn't been the case before. Her immediate enthusiasm to latch onto this new theory, to give him the benefit of the doubt even when it looked bad, even when he himself isn't willing to go all the way - and it did look bad - is humbling. He takes a shaky breath when she tells him he loves her. "I love you too," he says. He's oblivious to Alvina's more murderous line of thinking and instead returns to her question of how they'd go about unlocking what will unquestionably be a painful memory. "Lanara," he reminds her, his voice growing gruff. "She has .. she has some item that shows you the truth about past events. I don't know how it works, but hopefully I can just ... ask it to show me what happened." Alvina had asked how THEY would figure it out, but he is talking about HIMSELF viewing the image shown by the skull, because for obvious reasons he thinks he should do it alone. "She owes me a favor, so..."

Alvina furrows her brow at this. When he’d mentioned finding an answer before, she thought he just meant a round of truth serum. Instead, he’s telling his wife about a mystical object that shows the truth about past events. Oddly convenient for their predicament. Would Lanara, or other witches, create a magical illusion that would convince Alvina Hudson hadn’t cheated on purpose? No, Lanara wouldn’t lie to her. Surely Lana, of all people, knew how precious the truth was. Especially to her friends. Alvina doesn’t know what to say. On one hand, she thinks Hudson should find the truth if he’s so dead set on the idea that he ‘wouldn’t’ even though he has. Technically, they both ‘have’. On the other hand, she wants to know what happened too, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Not that she didn’t trust him but...she didn’t trust him to tell her the unedited truth because he was no doubt not his best husband self.

“I’ll talk to her.” Alvina decides, out loud, without further discussion. She is curious about one thing though. A couple, if she’s honest. “You knew she was back and didn’t tell me?” Is the first and then “Why does she owe you a favor…?” What was all this? Lana’s sudden appearance in the situation. Something that shows past events. So not even a lie detector. Just a straight up spyglass into the past. Could she use it to see whatever she wanted? Could she go back to see those moments of weakness she’d missed when Hudson confided in Valrae?! That was insane. This was about Candice. Candice Snow. “I’ll go talk to her.” She repeats, finalizing the decision in stone. “And then we can go from there….?” She leans back so they can see sectors of each other’s faces. She lofts an eyebrow, silently asking if they can agree on that. She knows he needs to know, for his own personal reasons and reassurances, but she needs to know too. And if she has to ask Lanara without Hudson’s permission, she sure as hell will.

Of course Alvina insists on speaking to Lanara by herself. Hudson of course would rather she not, but he swallows a mouthful of air rather than speak off the cuff. He's glad neither of them can really read the other's face right now. "Slipped my mind," he says, in response to her asking about Lanara's return. "Probably because it came up in the context I wouldn't normally talk to you about." His work. Criminal activity. He pauses. This time he'll explain, because it relates to them, as a couple. "She was implicated in a bank heist. That one that got attributed to the witch hunters recently." That had been his involvement. "It was just her stealing her magical item back. Something about false accusations and needing to clear her name." An unsettling pause expands between them, and he tries to fit his tongue to the right words to ask her to reconsider her desire to be the one who looks. Except she speaks first, staking her intentions once more. She draws back to look at him, and he frowns at her. "Do you really think I'd lie to you about what I saw?" he asks, though he doesn't leave her much space to reply, because he adds, "Don't answer that." He heaves a sigh and looks at her, waiting for her to recant but she isn't. "Alvina," he says her name quietly. "There's a good chance it's just going to make you sad. So I don't want you to see - I think I should look. I want you to trust me, but what if it's bad? I can't promise it's not. I mean, you can .. compartmentalize now because you didn't see it happen, but I don't know .. after." His forehead creases. "I know I shouldn't get to worry about it, but I am worried about it."

Alvina doesn’t try to drill deeper into why Hudson’d kept Lanara’s reappearance a secret. It’s possible it slipped his mind so she just gives him the benefit of the doubt. It all felt...off. If he knew Lanara had this thing and knew he didn’t believe he’d been with Candice, why wouldn’t he have gone to Lanara on his own, without Alvina’s knowledge, and confirmed before suggesting it to her? Maybe he already had and he knew for sure, just had to get Alvina to ‘take the bait’ and go on her own to see the truth. If it was, indeed, the truth. All her doubts blend with his reasoning. He didn’t talk to her about work but this felt oddly personal. She hadn’t thought twice about the bank heist. She frowns helplessly at his question, even after he tries to erase it. She wants to trust him, she -really- does...but she wants to see him turn Candice down, if that is indeed what had happened like he said. She needs to. Needs to know that despite his flirty behavior that he’d in truth turn down another woman’s advances for her sake. If he tells Candice ‘no’ it’ll be worth any other questionable remarks he might have made the evening of. But would it be worth having the image of her husband tangled around Candice burned into the back of her eyelids forever? Hudson’s saying her name with a fragileness that makes her feel more brittle. She pulls one of her hands free and covers his eyes so he couldn’t see her face. She didn’t want him to see how afraid she was. “I need to hear you tell Candice no…” Alvina’s whisper is barely audible. She had no intention of sitting through his explicit performance with Candice and she had no intention of letting HIM sit through it either. She keeps his eyes covered, searching the room for an object of interest, anything, to focus on to steel her nerves. She finds a very uninteresting coat rack and studies it hard in the silence. When she’s sure she won’t cry, Alvina pulls her hands away so they can see each other again. He looks so helpless for this exact moment in time. It threatens to break the peace she’d made with herself. “You can worry,” It was fair for him to worry, “but if it happens...I won’t watch any further. I don’t want to...see...” She swallows, drawing in a long breath. “I don’t want to see that.” Her thin, reassuring smile evaporates. She doesn’t need to convince him...she could go on her own, but she’d prefer to have his blessing. Not telling the truth had only hurt their marriage...and they were better than that now, right? They had never been stronger. She had to know why. He had to let her. "Hudson, please."

Hudson had literally just forgotten about Lanara. He'd really deferred thinking critically about the whole situation because of Meadow's birth and the fact that he'd initially taken the approach of trying to hide and move on from what had happened. It's not unreasonable that his wife on her end would go through some elaborate thought process about the lengths to which he could be duplicitous. He is a criminal, after all, that is how he operates. It's just that, here, not the case. Rather fortunately for him he can't read her mind. That's not the only thing he'd be alarmed about (e.g., that she's even considering taking a peek at Valrae). Alvina covers his eyes and he draws in a deep breath and slowly releases another sigh, feeling the closeness that had been between them bleed out.

Her wobbly explanation, that she needed to hear him say no, is so uncertain that it makes him question his certainty. "I did tell her no," he says with quiet defensiveness, though of course privately he's wondering. How forcefully did he tell her no? When she watches it, is what Alvina will hear 'no,' or will she hear 'yes?' How much has his mind blurred in his own favor out of self-protection? Is that what happened when he blacked out? She says she won't watch, but he's not sure he believes her on that either. A silence unspools between them, during which they look at one another. She says his name in a pleading tone because he's not answering. "Yeah," he answers hoarsely. "OK." He offers her a crumpled smile, and then shifts on the bed to lie on his back, and pulls her close so that she can lie against his chest. He doesn't say anything, because to complain about how this makes HIM feel would be to invoke a fair critique from her about how it's HIS fault. But that's just it. He's worried that this is the last time for a long time, maybe ever, that they're this intimate. He feels his eyes stinging on the heels of that thought. Maybe Alvina is right to not trust him, right to insist that she be the one to check. He'd do whatever he could to protect them, even if, and most especially if, it was against himself.