RP:We Always Made A Good Team

Part of the Laugh Now, Cry Later Arc

Summary: Hudson summons Valrae to his turf, at the Six Seasons hotel bar, to talk about how she’s been after him and Cenril Mayor Uma Abelin in the press for the city’s handling of the zombie outbreak. Valrae surprises him and makes it a point to show up as herself: her true self, the self that was burned as the red witch, before her soul was given a new body. Hudson softens toward her, and invites her to collaborate with him on the situation for old times’ sake, which she says she has to think about.

Hotel Bar, the Six Seasons on the Boardwalk, Cenril

Hudson is still living in the presidential suite and holding court at the hotel bar at the Six Seasons, the Cenril waterfront’s crown jewel. He’s attained all the notoriety he’d been after with the original idea, too. The mermaid Fairfax lives there as well, in his suite, in the spare room. With her newfound legs. Wearing the enchanted diamond bracelet he’d given her, some time ago. Enjoying her newfound life as a walker woman. Buying flapper clothes on his credit, and … Gradually forgetting what it was to be a mermaid. He’d not exactly advertised that upon giving it to her, and it didn’t convenience him to point it out. He wasn’t with her, he didn’t touch her, it wasn’t like that - well he liked to have her on his arm, and he danced with her sometimes, she was the life of the party at the bar when there was live music - but he loved to look at her. Loved to gaze at this monster in a woman’s skin, beautiful without ever trying, playing with a long string of pearls he’d bought her, letting her expensive sable coat drag on the floor. Not caring how feral she sounded, obviously - notwithstanding her protests to the contrary - like a creature from the sea. A man eater. People whisper the word mermaid and he doesn’t correct them. He simply smiles a rogue’s grin. She is his favorite artwork. A very expensive favorite artwork, who runs up the room service tab, but she keeps things less lonely. Which sometimes, they were. … But tonight she’s not there, at the hotel bar. She has things that she does on her own time sometimes, often, and Hudson doesn’t keep her from them. His enjoyment of her is correlated with the mystery of her. Tonight, instead, he sits alone at his chosen table, nursing a glass of amber liquor. He’s looking past the awning, at the boardwalk directly, waiting for someone. Someone to whom he’d had delivered a robin-egg blue rectangular box. Instead of a bracelet waiting inside, though, there had only been a broken femur. And a note from him: “Thinking of you.”

Valrae clicked down the boardwalk in tall, strappy black heels as the wind that buffeted all of Cenril whipped her long hair behind her like curling golden ribbon. Hudson’s gift was a surprise, one she’d opened in her private office and only shaken her head about when pressed by her aunt who wrongly assumed it was a siny, romantic gift from a mystery man. “Thinking of you.” She’d known the blackened thing belonged to her the moment she’d touched the box. The scent of fire had come to her, the memory of pain as it crawled along her skin as she’d screamed. The message was clear. It was a calling card as much as it was a warning. As the witch did all the preening and preparing that a woman does when visiting a complicated ex, she decided she was feeling, as she often did when it came to Hudson, like there was no other option than to answer his macabre summons. She’d chosen her dress with all the calculation and care of someone going off into a battle. It was tight and short, the bold red that had become her calling card. She wore a long black coat and a matching face mask. The only jewelry she wore was a solitaire diamond on a platinum chain that twinkled like starlight in the hollow of her throat. Another gift. Valrae enters the hotel bar and is escorted to Hudson’s table. She hangs her bag and shakes out of her coat slowly, removes the mask only after she’d been seated. He might have noticed before, as her dark eyes were large and lined with kohl over the mask, familiar as her ghost. But without the cloth covering the rest of her face there would be no mistaking it. Valrae was as she’d been. All eyes, pouting red painted lips under a small, slightly upturned nose. She smiled sweetly, looking at him underneath heavy lashes as she ordered red wine and waited for the waiter to float away from the table. “Will any seaborne be joining us tonight?” Her eyes sparkle with humor. “Should I move my bag?”

Hudson , it need be said, is certainly not wearing a face mask. He’s a lycan, so his immune system isn’t your average immune system, but for clarification no one in the hotel bar at the Six Seasons was. That just wasn’t a thing that this part of Cenril did. It doesn’t surprise him, though, that she does. Maybe a little pointedly. She’d not been shy about taking jabs in the press. He watches her as she makes her way to his table, watches her open her coat to reveal a tiny little dress that she wears like a knife strapped to her body. It’s only when she sits down in front of him, as he settles his gaze on hers, on those heavily made up eyes that had taken him in many summers ago, that he realizes: Valrae is herself. His Valrae. In response to her question, he licks his lips and drinks from his glass. No beer - whiskey helped him sleep better these days. “No,” he answers neatly once that’s done, setting the glass down. “She’s out eating homeless people,” he answers, offering her an unsettling grin. “I’m kidding. She’s nice to look at though, you’d enjoy her even if you’re giving me a hard time now.” He reaches for a slender glass tube, like an elongated cigarette - a magical pipe of sorts - and inhales from it, funneling the smoke out into the room, away from them. Indeed it seems he does pass his time drinking, vaping, and hanging out with a model (who possibly eats people). “You look beautiful, but you know that,” he tells Valrae, studying her so that she takes in his meaning. “If I ask you to dance, will you decline because it’s not very socially distanced? I don’t think my kind can get it. Or will you decline because it would be a bad look for your trashing me in the papers?”

Valrae watches him polish off his drink and feels the trill of satisfaction run along the length of her spine. She only blinks when Hudson makes a wisecrack about the mermaid eating homeless men, forever steely in the face of whatever unsettling thing he’d thrown at her. A learned survival mechanism. It was only when he pointed out her own teasing that she smiled. “Well, someone has too.” And Valrae, while always assuming she was on thin ice, still felt brave enough to do it now that she’d taken him off guard coming as her own ghost. Her nose wrinkles as he drags from his vape. The waiter returns with her drink and she takes a delicate sip. “Do I?” She smiles again, tilting her head so that her golden hair slips over her shoulders. But it was clear she knew, as she felt it too. Valrae was as he’d known her, yes, but she was also more. Her face was the same, all big eyes and innocents, but there was the newness of polish that came with age and experience now. And there was power, something she wore just as plainly as the bold red dress, wrapped around her like a second skin. “It’s still nice to hear.” Her laughter was light and quiet, like a bell. “It’s not socially distanced but I’ve been known to break a few rules.” She pointedly ignored his comment on the papers. “I could be convinced.”

Hudson gives Valrae a weighty look when she feigns ignorance to the compliment he’d paid her. It’s strange, to look upon the woman he’d known, but feel the gravitas of the woman of the present. She doesn’t say no to his request to dance, so he stands, sliding out of his side of the table, and holds out a hand to help her up. The band’s playing something upbeat, with a percussive rhythm that keeps people on the dance floor moving. There’s a horn player carrying a lively melody. Hudson pulls Valrae against him without a second thought, and they feed into the couples moving on the floor. Some people look, and Hudson can very nearly hear the murmur at their backs, as he leads her into a turn: Who’s that woman in red? She’s not the mermaid, and there’s something about her … “This is very indulgent, even for me,” Hudson says as they come back together, staying in a close hold. “But sort of feels like you got my gift and are making a point. So now, I--” he lifts his arm to turn her. “--I’m making a point too.” That things aren’t so bad between Hudson Landon and Valrae, the Red Witch. If that woman he is dancing with is indeed she. Hudson reels her back to him. “I had a medium evaluate the bone,” he says quietly, against her ear, “she sensed other people were looking for you. You could keep a lower profile.”

Valrae was only sweet smiles and fluttering lashes, even as she took his hand and let him lead her to the dancefloor. She moves against him with the beat, easy and fun and filled with laughter, as if they weren’t what they were. Hudson wasn’t the dangerous kingpin of Cenril. Valrae wasn’t the twice dead witch that threatened the already tumultuous peace that Cenril suffered. The witch spins as he lifts his arm, her golden hair fanning around her and flashing in the low light. “Oh, for me too.” She comments, her voice light with teeth rotting sweetness. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the work we’re doing in the South Side. For the pandemic. You know, the zombies?” She was still smiling, moving with the rhythm of the dance floor, but her eyes were darker now. “There is a lot less dancing there.” She knew what it must look like, the two of them together in public and close as they were. Val could imagine the flashing headlines, how they would tilt heavily toward Hudson in the papers. She pushes close to him and leans back her head. “I don’t know that I’ve even begun making a point yet,” She moves back again. “But I do know what happens to people when they’ve been neglected for too long after a tragedy. And I know what happens when people go on a witch hunt.” Her brows wing when Hudson mentions the medium and gives her the warning. It was as endearing as it was confusing. His ‘gift’ had been a clear threat, but their relationship had always been strange and, it was apparent now it was also a helpful warning. “Let them look, Hudson.” Her smile falls, just for a second, as the music changes. “I’m done hiding.”

Hudson hadn’t replied to Valrae’s pointed question about the South Side zombies. They both know that he knows about the situation there, anyway. For now, they’re caught on the subject of her brazen return to the world of the living. Just in time, the song they’ve been dancing to ends. The band is picking up the opening bars of a slow ballad, so this’ll have to be it for their turn around the dance floor. A moment seems to expand between them and Hudson gives her a prolonged look as they stand there together, before releasing her. “So am I,” he says as they turn back to his table. His hand brushes against her back to guide her out of the couples now slow dancing around them. He watches her get her things. “I don’t agree with you coming out like this,” he tells her, staying close so that their conversation stays private, the music loud around them. “But you probably don’t agree with me coming back to Cenril. You aren’t alone on that.” Alvina’s name lies between them, an invisible line he would not cross. “We always made a good team, though, Val.” He offers her a dark smile. “Or maybe I just want to see you again like this.” He lifts his eyebrows. “I’ve had some to drink,” he excuses himself. “Think about it.”

Valrae lets him lead again, his hand possessive on the small of her back. She can feel eyes on her but she ignores them, her chin high. Their brief but heavy meeting was reaching a natural end and so she began to gather her things. She let him help her into her coat and shouldered her bag. “Because it’s dangerous for me or you?” She asks, her head tilting again as she shakes her hair out of the coat. Her smile was genuine now and reached her eyes. “You might be surprised.” The witch takes a step forward, tugging on his shirt a bit. But she had heard Alvina’s name in the spaces between his words. “Like you said, we’ve always made a great team.” She places a quick kiss to his cheek before she steps away again. “I’ll think about it. And you’ll have plenty of time to see me like this. Veritas asked me for an interview.” The witch slipped on her mask, her quiet protest to the privileged that moved around them free of the strain that Cenril’s virus had placed over the lower class. “It was good to see you,” Without looking back, Valrae slipped back onto the boardwalk and headed toward her home.