Archive of Our Own ^beta

Some time last night, your mother breathed your name.

- Dear Theodosia (Cut Reprise)

They haven’t fallen asleep yet, too wired talking about everything and nothing. Everything that matters that week. Everything that will be forgotten by the next. Helen considers suffocating herself with her pillow just to get even a wink of sleep before dawn, but finally, it seems like Madeline’s chattering has run out of steam. 

Almost. 

“Hey, Helen?” Despite whispering, Madeline’s voice lances through the room.

Helen keeps her breaths even and her eyes firmly closed. She’d found a comfortable position on her stomach and if she moves even the slightest she knows sleep will evade her for hours. She has a French test second period, which she really needs to be rested for, so Helen hopes Madeline will decide this isn’t important- ow!

A blunt nail pokes her in the ribs. “Hel?”

She flinches at Madeline’s breath suddenly at her ear. “What Mad? I’m trying to sleep.”

She expects loud rustling and shifting, prepares herself for some inane question about a hot teacher or another round critiquing Bobby’s lame prom-posal, not this tenuous and still silence. 

“What, Maddie?” She huffs. She holds herself still, praying this conversation will be a quick one.

Madeline whispers again, “Do you think we could have kids?”

“What!?” Hearing her own voice too loud for the darkness cuts off her shock. Helen swallows before whispering back, “We are kids.”

“I don’t mean now.” Madeline’s fingertips pinch at the cotton shirt lifting around Helen’s back as she gathers her thoughts. “Like when we’re grown ups, and all responsible and shit.”

“I don’t know, Mad. Do you even like kids?” She almost turns to see Madeline’s face in the dim light coming through the window, but she doesn’t want to open her eyes.

“I don’t think I’ll be a good mom. I’ll probably just fuck them up somehow.” 

Behind her eyelids, Helen can picture the small furrow between Madeline’s brow, her bottom lip jutting out just the slightest bit. She runs her tongue over her teeth. “Why would you think that?” She tries to string together something reassuring, “We don’t know what kind of parents we’ll be- we don’t know what kind of people we’ll be. You could win the Nobel Peace Prize; pacifists are good mothers.”

Warm fingers abandon fabric and press against her lower back. They caress the notches of her spine like piano keys, tapping out some slow melody only Mad can hear. “I don’t know, just something my mom said.”

That woman, Helen thinks, she was always just saying. 

If Madeline’s mother ever listened to a single thing she ‘just said’ then- Well, then Madeline wouldn’t be staying with Helen because of her mother’s new boyfriend’s leering. She might actually notice that her fifteen-year-old daughter hasn’t been home in two weeks. 

Though Helen doesn’t have much room to criticise when her own parents haven’t noticed Madeline inhabiting her room—or rather, her wing of the manor—in all that time either. 

“And if I’m winning anything, it’s an EGOT.” Madeline pivots haughtily. Her whole palm burns against Helen’s skin. 

Despite rolling her closed eyes, the corner of Helen’s mouth turns up against the pillow, “I thought you liked a challenge?”

“Why should peace get a prize? It’s so boring! ‘Conflict creates Drama,’ aka anything worth watching.”

Just to be contrary Helen says wryly, “So that our children have a world to live in?”

“So you do want kids.” Madeline’s hand pulls away to poke Helen in the shoulder.

She shrugs to brush off the prodding digit. “Someone needs to inherit the Mason-Sharp legacy.”

“Right, your ancient Pilgrim lineage.”

She can feel Madeline laughing against her and softly joins. It never seems as funny when her parents are reminding her about her stuffy old ancestors, but Madeline makes the weight feel like an inconvenient footnote rather than a generational burden. 

“Or I can grow old alone and give everything to, like, orphans or something.”

“Or the Arts! You could be one of those spinsters in fur coats with a Broadway theatre named after them. The Helen Sharp Theatre. Helen Sharp: Patron of the Arts.”

“And look, I’m already housing a starving artist.”

Madeline’s heat disappears and she knows she said the wrong thing. Shit. 

“Maddie,” she reaches out a hand to Madeline’s arm. Missing the first time, she opens her eyes. With her blurry vision she can see Madeline has retreated to her side of the bed and is now on her back with blankets up to her chin, and eyes shut. “I didn’t mean-“

She tuts, cutting off the half thought apology, “Nah, you’ll probably pop out a few for some boring lawyer your parents find for you.”

She deserved that. Helen bites back her desire to respond with something equally cutting. It’s too late to fight. 

Instead, she finds Madeline’s wrist under the covers and tries to pull the blonde back onto her side, but she stubbornly refuses to budge. 

“You can be their favorite Aunt Mad.”

“If I’m not too busy.” Madeline’s half shrug shifts the blankets enough for a blast of cold air to hit Helen’s neck. 

She shivers. “Axel and Mary will adore you, even if you are. I know you’ll spoil them.”

Madeline’s head snaps around with a look of horror. “Please tell me you’re not naming your kids that! Mary and Axel!? Maybe I would be the better mom.”

Helen winces at the volume, it seems they’re done whispering then. “What’s wrong with the names?” Since she won’t be sleeping soon, she rolls onto her side and inches into Madeline’s warmer side of the covers, trapping an arm and leg between her own. 

The blonde doesn’t seem to notice, too affronted by the names. “What sort of name is Axel?”

“I don’t know; I think it sounds cool.” Madeline’s shifting features are so clear this close, her eyes so bright in the dim threads of light. 

“Until he’s twenty-five! Then you have to take responsibility for releasing a middle-aged ‘Axel’ on the world.”

“Fine, but Mary was my grandmother’s name.”

Her chin dips to level Helen with a perfectly timed curled lip and a piercing stare. “And it sounds like it.”

Maybe she has a point, “What about Maria?” 

Madeline’s nose scrunches instead of answering.

“What’s the problem with ‘Maria?’”

“Just that! See, there’s like a whole song about it. If you name her Maria she’ll be bullied by nuns whenever we watch The Sound of Music.”

Helen couldn’t even remember the last time they watched The Sound of Music. “Then we’ll watch West Side Story instead.”

“I think Scarlett is a pretty name. Like Vivian Leigh in Gone With the Wind.”

“Good book,” she hums.

“It’s a movie, Hel.”

“Based on a book!”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is! It’s on the English Honors syllabus this year.”

“Ah, so it’s a nerd book,” she teases.

Helen shakes her head, “Sure, Mad.”

“You’ll let me read it to you, right?” Madeline finally faces her again, adjusting Helen’s arms between them and tangling their legs together. 

She sinks into the heat. “Of course.” She likes hearing Madeline make up the voices. She just likes Mad’s voice. 

“Ooh, what about Victoria?”

“It’s a little grandiose.” Her fingertips flick at the ruffled silk at Madeline’s collar, trying to remember what horrible relative gifted her this sleepwear set that she can feel Madeline’s skin through. She’ll have to thank them again. “And Icky Vicky?”

“Fine, then Victor for a boy.”

“He sounds like a dictator. Be serious.”

“I am serious. Arthur?”

“The ‘once and future king?’ Bentley.”

“Like the car?” Madeline smiles deviously, “Cameron.”

Helen catches on and laughs, barely getting out, “David” through her giggles. 

“Ethan,” Madeline says quickly. 

“Franklin.”

“George.”

“Henry.”

“Ivan.”

“Terrible. Our boy names suck.”

“We’ll do girls next, but you’re stalling. Come on, stop cheating, ‘J.’”

“James…”

Like many other nights, they don’t fall asleep for hours still. Talking about everything and nothing. Nothing important. Nothing memorable. Nothing worth the C on her French test. 

Until her daughter-to-be is first placed in her shaking arms. Looking into bright blue eyes refusing to sleep, she can’t ignore the prodding ghost of a thought; that Scarlett is a pretty name from a very good book.