RP:The Remedy

Part of the Larketian Fault Lines Arc

Summary: Hudson, after having a fight with Valrae where he thinks she tries to blackmail him, rushes to visit Alvina at work to confess to sleeping with her during their most recent breakup (pre-marriage). Alvina, who was recently grilled by Hudson for her own insecurities, gets fired up and they fight. It escalates to a high boiling point, but ends with them settling on terms. They agree to destroy the Witch Detector in Larket and then take a much need couple's vacation to re solidify their marriage. Also, it is revealed that Alvina secretly buys and eats entire packs of cookies.

Frostmaw Towers

Agitated and, maybe a little drunk on malt liquor, after his meeting with Valrae, Hudson had gone directly to Alvina's work. This couldn't wait until after work, because then they'd have to deal with their daughters, and dinner, and bedtime. And he's not sure he'll be able to look her in the face for that long. Valrae had exited tearfully, had seemingly recanted the poisonous implications she'd made about his wife, but for Hudson it's as if the ground beneath him as exploded. He can't trust Valrae. And she's one person whose trust he thought he could count on. Not anymore. If she threatened to tell Alvina about the incident on The Couch once, she might do it again. He wants to just cauterize the wound before it festers. He must look like a man under siege, because Alvina's assistant shows him in without any of the normal small talk. He looks after her, waiting for the door to shut before seating himself opposite his wife. She doesn't look pleased to see him. He doesn't blame her. There's been a strain at home ever since the Sudden Vanishing, and his abrupt and unannounced arrival at her place of business, without flowers or lunch, doesn't suggest the greatest of news. He also has the look of someone who wants to be sick. It feels a bit that way. He takes his coat off and launches right into it, without looking at her: "I ah... well I don't want to draw this out. I'll just say it very quickly. I think Valrae just tried to blackmail me. She and I slept together when we were split up most recently. Just once." He drops his head in his hands and stares at the floor below. "I know, I lied, I'm sorry."

Alvina had continued through her life as normal after their conversation so the reports Hudson got from the investogator that's tailing her were boring. Alvina goes to the fur store three hours and argues with the clerk about using an alternative to real animals. Alvina gets lost on her way to take the wyvern back to Frostmaw, finds what looks like a dead body, ties it to wyvern, flies to frostmaw, gives dead body to Leone. She gets groceries, buying TWO packs of cookies and keeping one for herself. So when HUdson comes into her office, Alvina worried at first it was the children. When you have kids and you can’t see them that is the WORST situation. After that, it was this other business. The Vanishing and their arguments after. The way things had been tense but they’d been trying, after a particularly bad round of blame to rebuild something semi-normal. Mostly due in part to Alvina’s wandering eye syndrome APPARENTLY. Alvina would say more to do with her confession but that was neither here nor there. When Hudson is led in, her assistant gives her a scrunched expression that roughly translates to the equivalence of a human question mark and exits, knowing full well to allow no one else in. Alvina’s not drunk but can maybe smell something across the distance because it’s unique. “Are you drunk?” She asks, confused and trying to stand to get him some water before he throws up on her floor. “There’s a bin just there-” she points, cut off by him talking. Her face morphs from concern to outright disbelief. Why hadn’t Valrae said then when she’d gone to see her?!? Of course, why would Valrae tell her that? That’s just another nail on the chalkboard between them and they had been separated. How even is this? He’d slept with two women while they were separated and she’d slept with...none. Just got wrapped up in some romantic affair that involved long walks in the snow and emotionally long conversations and glances. Her jaw slacks, she wants to say she doesn’t believe it but really she does. A bunch of sounds and things to say come to mind but she’s sinking back into her chair, exhaling sounds instead of words. “Uh-uhm-ah-aj..” Eventually, her arms go up and she realizes BOTH of them have shattered trust in each other. What even is their life. “O-okay? Why was she trying to blackmail you?” She asks, in a voice that lacks patience but also judgement.

"I'm a little drunk," concedes Hudson, belatedly, exhaling roughly in response to Alvina's question. "She wants us to break the witch machine, says it's being used to hunt people. Obviously I said we were already doing it, but we argued pretty bad before that point..." He tries to keep light on that point, because while it feels like a betrayal to him that Valrae would cross him, it certainly won't help his case with Alvina to point that out. Better to let Alvina focus on the fact that he and Valrae are not on excellent terms. That the worst thing he could unearth out of fear of blackmail was this one time event. He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes until he sees stars a little. Here's a sick thing he's had to think about: whether he needs to put a hit out on Valrae. Because she has loads of other dirt, dirt that won't hurt him too badly with Alvina, but dirt that relates to his criminal activities, could hurt him elsewhere. He doesn't know if he can do it. He keeps thinking about how when he'd told her to get out, she'd cried, she'd known she'd made a mistake. Had she cried because she'd known it was wrong to break his trust, or because she was afraid of what he'd do to her? He wants to believe she'd made a mistake, that she's a good girl. But then why is he here. "She knows other things, Alvina... about my work..."

Alvina feels immediately raw that this is the subject the discussed. “We already talked about that -” she starts, not yet knowing how to tell Hudson she’d gone to see Val shortly after making the machine. To apologize, about her job and...the device. She doesn’t know how to say that so she clears her throat and tries another approach, leaving the distance between them because she can’t hold him while he cries about Valrae again. She just -can’t-. “If all she wants is the machine broken, we can break it.” But she feels a sour jealousy rising. Why did Valrae know things about his work that she didn’t? Why did she know? Was she his accessory? Why is it always Valrae? Alvina tries to soothe her ego by thinking of when she’d gone over there. How she’d blurted out this confession / apology about Valrae’s job and she’d been so calm about it. Said Hudson and her both knew the job was a mistake and it was Alvina who had the sense to call it before it got worse. That Val shouldn’t have gotten the job in the first place. Her sitting on her mismatches furniture, spoon swirling around in steaming tea to dissolve the sugar she’d just put in it. She knew it as sure as she knew the sky was blue. “She won’t blackmail you.” She says calmly, trying to channel Valrae’s grace in this moment, though she’d never admit it to anyone. “She loves you too much -” She starts before shaking her head, eye twitching with disgust at defending anyone in this situation. Who defended her, she wondered but then...she guessed Hudson had. They’d argued. “Is that why you met? Because she wanted to ask you about the witch machine or is this because…” She didn’t need to say it. It filled the space between them like old pad thai. Reeking of things she didn’t want to say.

Hudson appreciates his wife talking him down from where his head's going but Alvina hadn't been in the room with them, she can't know what Valrae had been like. He doesn't want to hear that Valrae loves him. He's not teary-eyed presently, just squeezing his eyelids shut angrily. He stops for a second to wave his hand in a gesture that's supposed to mean 'please don't.' He looks up at Alvina at her asking about their meeting, though. "Just the machine," he tells her. Valrae hadn't exactly set an agenda for the meeting when she'd called it. He'd not known it was about the machine until she'd said so. "We'd run into each for work in this weird accident. Um." He frowns, balances his head on his fist and keeps looking at Alvina. Best to just be forthcoming, she knows all the bad stuff now. "Fitz was writing all these dirty letters to women who weren't Uma... Sarge had to hire a witch, anyway he didn't mean to hire Valrae, she didn't know it was a job for me and she used a fake name. It was really awkward when we realized. She cleaned up the mess though. That was a few weeks ago, I meant to tell you but the Vanishing and it never seemed a good time. Obviously. I sort of thought she asked me for a meeting to ask about this thing, maybe some money for the resistance, I don't know. Nothing was ever gonna happen, Alvina, it's so far from like that with me and her now."

Alvina doesn’t believe it, but who could blame her? Her face says as much, scrunched in a mirror of her assistance’s when she’d left before. It’s hard to remove yourself from those feelings and if things were weird between them and he’d agreed to meet Val...well it just feels off. She can’t imagine. “I already told her I was going to take care of the machine…” She whispers to Hudson, feeling the fool yet again. Everything she did, he could do better, apparently. “But I haven’t.” She sinks her face into her hands, her cheeks are flushed with an indescribable mix of emotions. “Were you going to tell me?” It doesn’t do much for his credit that he’s waited until the literal last possible moment to make these confessions. Any later, if Val had gotten to Alvina first, she’d had lost her mind - even if they weren’t together at the time. WTH man…

Hudson doesn't think his wife's buying what he's selling. If he's honest, he'd admit to himself that he'd intended only to have a casual hang with Valrae, a laugh over Fitz's idiocy, maybe an inappropriate flirt here or there. Something to get him right up to the line to feel like he could even the score with his wife if he wanted. If he were self-aware, he'd realize that even that's a bit dangerous. They'd been alone and there'd been alcohol in the room and he's, uh, himself. Of course his wife doesn't believe him. "She mentioned you guys met, I guess," he says, feeling the words flag. Shame creeps into his expression. "I don't know if I would have ever told you," he reveals, frowning at her. "Because now you're going to be sad about it, and I don't want you to be sad." He shakes his head. "And it was stupid. I don't know what you're thinking in your head, but stop, it was .. not like whatever you're imagining. She was present at a bad time. You'd left me and I was a mess. She... was a mess too, I guess. We avoided each other after. Then the thing with Lita was after that, and then that was it, so..." He's tired by himself. He rakes a hand over his face. "I know you're not like me about this stuff, but please try not to take it like that. It was basically transactional."

Alvina would have argued that point. She’d also enjoyed her own casual hang outs with people. It’s not dangerous right? She’d have wondered why he needed to even a line that hadn’t been crossed. But she isn’t aware of what he’s not saying, what he’s thinking is safe from her judgement. What she is aware of, what he’s divulging now, is in a different ball park. “Funny how that works…” She jabs, angry but trying to reel it back in. He goes on to explain about Valrae and then another bit about Lita and it’s just like pressing into those old scars to see if they might burst open at the seams and bleed again. They do a little. It’s embarrassing, to think about but also hadn’t she been bad when they weren’t together? And maybe also since they’d gotten back to working on the same team? She sighs, equally exhausted but having no anger left to give the issue. She’s just dead -tired- of their lying to each other. And if she could see hooking up with someone as a transaction instead of this cosmic exchange of intentions, well maybe she’d feel differently but she can’t really. “Were you drunk when you met her or just since she left?” She asked, feeling the weight of this dumb and redundant question on her lips. Why was she even asking? What did it matter now?

"I was like half a beer deep if that when we spoke. Got a little drunk after I threw her out though," says Hudson, grimacing. Well, evidently Alvina can tell he'd taken a little liquid courage to have this conversation with her. He gets up and moves around to her side of the desk, leans against it, facing her in her chair. He considers her, and after a moment laughs a singular bitter laugh. He looks down at the floor between them. "Ah, my wife is wondering if that other guy would have done this to her..." he sighs, grimacing again. He thinks about what it had felt like to tell a stranger (the private investigator) about his wife. Intrusive. Weird. Sad. He'd felt defensive. Because he doesn't actually want the guy to find anything on Alvina. He still can't believe her, in that sense. Not Alvina, she's a good girl, she'd never (she did). He glances up, turns his frown on her. "I'm sorry," he tells her. She's not crying, which is unlike her, her composure makes him uneasy. He reaches for her hand and squeezes it between both of his. "Don't leave me for him over this. It's old and .. yeah, it's old. I think I've been good to you. We have our rough patches but I try and I love you. I think we should break this stupid machine and then I want to go on vacation, just us. Screw everybody else."

Alvina rolls her eyes to indicate she is not thinking that but she clearly was. She doesn’t try to deny it. She’d never ACTUALLY, she did emotionally. There is a difference, or at least she’d thought there was. It’s a good thing they aren’t in each other’s heads right now because all hell would literally break loose if she knew she was being followed. When he says she’s sorry, she shrugs, waiting for him to add some other sin to this funeral pyre. It’s not over until she cries, she guesses, she just doesn’t want to start the waterworks too early. She’s definitely surprised, and that’s what makes her want to cry more than anything. “The other guy is old too.” In a way, it’s true. “All this stuff is back from the time this first happened!” She said, pushing back away from the desk in her chair and rolling back a solid two inches. Her face is pinched, pained but there are no tears in her eyes. She’s just so angry now. “I’m not leaving you, Gods damn it…” If she had a 1% time she wished he’d get hit by a carriage, it’s right now. But the rest of the time, the moment before he stormed in here, she was thinking about how nice it would be to get home to see him and the girls. How he might read those letters to her again or braid her hair for her. How they could just exist in their protective bubble, away from all the hard situations and violence of the world. They could just be in love. “I think we’ve been mostly good to each other, except we have this nasty habit of trailing the past with us OR losing sight of what we have in favor of some other...probably pettier thing.” It’s a pointed remark, yeah but it’s still true. “A vacation won’t solve us, and no I’m not talking about the bloody counselor again. How do we get back to where we trust each other? I want us to have a blank slate, I really do but...” It’s so blood stained.

Hudson had hoped that Alvina's spontaneous docility in the face of a terrible announcement on his part meant that maybe it was less of a big deal than he'd thought. But that hope fizzles out pretty quickly when she moves away from him, taking her hand back, and her face changes, anger seeping into it. She'd just taken a second to process. Hudson's jaw tenses as she tries to say that they're the same here. To say the least he doesn't exactly agree with Alvina's characterization, because her situation is an ongoing issue, whereas he just did a thing and didn't tell her about it. She'd done a thing, hadn't told her, and was still doing the thing. "I've not lost sight of what I have, I only see you," he answers, his tone a bit short. The implication being that he doesn't see them comparing apples to apples here. He now knows that it had been unreasonable of him to trust her composure, which of course has now evaporated. But it still cuts him that she won't consent to his (he thinks) good idea of a vacation where they work on their marriage. She's knocked down his ideas but offered nothing in return. He can feel it emanating off of her: oh, she's well and truly angry now. Thinking about that other guy. Just like he'd said. He's not exactly a picture of calm himself. Is she really the most aggrieved party, over this ancient sin of his? Which had been outside the bounds of their relationship? A nasty silence installs itself between them. He breaks it first. "Well are you going to suggest an idea?" he asks her, in a tone that suggests he doesn't think she's even going to try.

Alvina had crossed her arms against her chest, her hair messy and maniac to give her an even more maddening look. This remark, she thinks, closing her eyes against the sting of it. Her husband was angry! And she was angrier still! His remorse evaporated quickly, like his lying held less weight than hers. She scuffs, trying to think of a suggestion before he brandished her silence like a lack of helpfulness. Alvina, what are you even doing to try and help us? Could you be more of a princess right now? “I'm thinking… “ She mumbled between her teeth with tight lips, eyelids opening so she can shoot him a dirty look. She’s angrier than she knows how to handle. She preferred when she would get overwhelmed and cry to whatever was happening this time. Being angry is not her bag. So she tries to approach this situation again, from a different angle. Valrae threatened to tell her about their.. Whatever, she can't even give it a name… And Hudson threw her out. It makes sense, if anyone threatened Hudson that they might not live too long after that. Maybe she'd talked him down from doing something mob style dangerous. Or maybe he wouldn't anyway, because they have a checkered past together. Ugh. This isn't helping. She stares ahead, chewing on the fingernail of her right thumb thoughtfully. He’d said he was sorry, and she'd basically attacked him again anyway. Alvina sighs, deflating her ego a bit. It's tough, she wants to be angry but she doesn't know why. It doesn't solve anything. “I'm sorry, “ she relentless, still stiff but trying to loosen up. “Maybe you are right…” each word is articulated with painstaking inflection “... And some time with just the two of us and no other stresses or outside forces is what we need.” It had been pretty much Emily coming to live with them > The Vanishing > Losing the baby as consequence of the Vanishing > Their argument about that other guy > This argument about Valrae. Back to back to back bad stuff with little time in between to actually recover. “Let's focus on destroying the machine and then we can plan it out.” she pauses, sighs and then unfolds her arms to look at him instead of straight ahead. “I love you, I do. I need you to know that even when I'm mad enough to pull away, I still don't want to be anywhere but with you.”

Hudson does feel himself getting angry. And a little itchy, maybe, if the headache he's feeling is any indication. It's just that he is pretty sure that his wife is cheating on him in her mind right now, if not plotting to do it in the flesh sometime soon. She doesn't want to go away and focus on their marriage. Why is that? Probably because she doesn't want to be away from the guy she really wants to be with. He knows how it is, he'd had an affair once. Alvina must have a certain amount of anxiety that the guy will lose interest in her, will move on, because she's married. She'll want to remain available to that guy, to continue providing all indications that her marriage isn't her priority right now. Her going on a vacation with her husband would be supremely unhelpful to her cause. That's why she doesn't want to do it. She might have agreed, before, out of guilt, but apparently not now with the Valrae revelation. Ah, he's so bitter that his dumb, inflammatory mistake has to now come to light at the worst possible time. And then on the other hand: this is a pathetic feeling. Why is he fighting his wife for her love? It makes him feel small. He feels like starving her, to protect himself but also to let Alvina feel what he feels. And when her friend starts to move on, and that guy will, because Alvina's not truly available - Hudson knows what that feels like, too - she'll want her husband back then. And he'll make her stand in line for his love. He's about to say, We don't have to do anything, Fine. But then she takes it back, shows him a little love, and he folds so hard. His face softens immediately. "I love you, so much," he says, frowning. "And I'm worried we're," she's, "breaking things in slow motion or something, and we just don't realize it. And I really, really don't want that. This is the only thing I want."

Alvina watches Hudson’s face soften and she feels herself bend to his affections. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him to love on her, of course that’s -all- she wanted but they’d be focusing on getting through the day in their own, individual heads and not so much as a married couple. They’d locked themselves away, wrapped in their own troubles and unable to turn to each other for support because...well if he’s hurting and she’s hurting, they don’t want to put more burden on each other by sharing it. The favor they thought they were doing each other was more of a disservice to their union. What is the point of marriage, if not to be a team? She nods, in agreement with his assessment. “I think it’s been easier to just hold up and wait for things to be better instead of actually working towards improving it. I think I’ve been doing the same thing with the machine…” She sighs, rolling back to her desk and leaning her chin into her propped up palms. “If this is what we really want,” and deep down, no matter how much she turned over the possibility of being else where, she knew this was what her heart wanted most. “We should work harder to keep it going.” The longer they were together, the easier it was to get lazy. Blame the other person for changing, not making the other as happy as they use to. The courting phase had ended, and maybe she missed that a bit. Missed him trying to win her love instead of just assuming he had it. Of course he did but, it’s nice to be pursued once in awhile. She smiles, some idiotic thought in her head. “We’ll go back to that place we went for the baby moon,” She suggested, “And make up fake names and jobs and flirt with each other. It’ll be fun. I’ll be offended that you’re talking to me and then secretly fall in love with you and leave my empire behind for our love.” Theeere she is, the real Alvina, wanting to do some cheesy thing like this. “We’ll talk all night and drink margaritas until 4 am, and be so hung over we order room service and lounge in a pool.” It sounded amazing, this fantasy marriage vacation. And then she’d remembered when they fought in her office once before, and she’d kissed him without the social grace to know whether or not he wanted her too. She turns to look at him, wondering if she should try it again but fearful he’ll deny her as he had a few nights ago. “What do you think?” She asks instead, a little timid.

Well ... Alvina can probably get a little courting out of this confession Valrae's forced out of him! In addition to the usual walking on eggshells, he'll probably very guiltily buy his wife an expensive piece of jewelry. That's the mainstream reaction that will occur to him in due course. She's rallying, his wife. He looks at her, and feels hope fill his chest. He continues murdering all of the poisonous thoughts he'd had moments prior. Nope, never fantasized about stonewalling his wife to make her feel loss. Alvina's idea of a vacation makes him smile ruefully. It's just what he wants out of her, but it's a little sad because of the vanished baby. Yeah, go back to the babymoon place... drink margaritas... He'd like to do it, but it's a little sore. Maybe that's the point. They need to just do the thing: if they perform being happy people, they will become them. "That sounds really nice, let's do that," he tells her. He's filled with tenderness for her. Later, he'll feel guilty about the PI (although perhaps also be endeared that his wife, who is terminally 'on a diet' supposedly just buys and eats entire boxes of cookies all by herself). "I miss you, baby," he says, reaching to collect her hand again. She'll probably say I'm right here or something, but he knows she knows what he means. He tugs on her arm to pull her out of her chair. "Come here, I know you're at work, I want a kiss real quick. Just the one."

Alvina nods, feeling firmly planted in her idea this is what they should do. But before that…” What do we do about the machine?” She asks, on the tail end of his agreement, before he tells her he missed her. Her brow scrunches in confusion, and because he knows her so well, she blurts out a predictable “I’m right here, you weirdo.” but she’s smiling, it’s endearing even if she doesn’t understand what he means. Maybe he misses being sweet with her or being showered in her love. Maybe they both miss that. He takes her hand and his skin feels warm against hers. It sends a jolt through her, like they’d never done more than hold hands for their entire relationship (obviously this is not true, they have kids together). She’s pulled up but looks around the empty room somehow embarrassed by his bold behavior. They should kiss in the privacy of her office? How absurd! It’s easy to forget about Larket in this moment. “What, no…” She says, smiling and leaning forward into him like she’ll relent anyway if he tries to kiss her. Her hair brushes across his shoulder, hiding their faces from a very judgemental office wall.