Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dolores Madrigal is living the most harrowing moment of her life. She's barely sixteen, still on the cusp of true womanhood, and has already ruined her future (at least, she's thinking in terms that her abuela might use, disappointment thick even in the voice in her head). Panic was settling in already, cold and sobering like that first moment she'd heard a fledgling heartbeat flicker to life inside of her, a whisper-soft thumping made concrete. She has to tell her mother, now, before it's too late, and she not only has to but wants to, is seeking coddling comfort she hasn't actively sought out in what feels like years.

For the past months, Dolores had managed to settle herself back into something like normal with her mother. After all, a pregnancy at this age could be dangerous, and whether or not Pepa knew it, Dolores worried (still does worry, but it's letting up more by the day, some combination of worry over her own impending motherhood and the relief of the due date being close). She'd been a mother hen in silence, helping with what she could and helping Camilo when she couldn't, just to feel like she was doing good for her family. Then it had happened, and that fragile peace flew out the window.

It's a strange feeling Dolores wakes with every day, something dirty at the thought of being pregnant at the same time as her mother, knowing her baby sibling will be an aunt or uncle to someone their age. One of many awful feelings she holds, now, both physical and mental.

She had never intended to get pregnant— honestly, who did? But in some mix of experimentation, rebellion, and embarrassment, she'd both had the sex to make the baby and refused to tell her tía about it (she'd had her cover blown by her ever so generous prima, of course, and now Julieta casts her glances across the table as she piles her plate high, flimsily telling Dolores' mother that she's a growing girl and needs the extra energy).

Somehow, she's managed to avoid the conversation long enough, but if she keeps it hidden any longer she might permanently ruin her relationship with Pepa, and she can't bear the thought of not having her on her side, waiting for her to come crawling back every time. 

Pepa is crocheting, sitting in the middle of the bed when her eldest enters. There is little preamble as Dolores takes a seat, perches on the edge of her parents' bed, barely a dent in the mattress like she's always been. She stares at the wall, away from the woman she's come to see, heaving out staccato breaths in a rhythm that reminds her of her estranged tío. 

The longer Dolores stares into the distance, the more worried Pepa gets, and she moves the yarn to gently fall on the floor. It is difficult, with as large as she’s gotten, but she manages to sit beside her daughter. 

"Mamá," she starts, then stops, and procures a small case that holds a set of ear plugs. She has a few she changes out, but the meaning is the same. Prepare yourself for a shock.

(Pepa hates those earplugs. She doesn’t hate the comfort they bring Dolores. She doesn’t hate Félix for providing them as a bridge to cross. She doesn’t hate Dolores for learning to stay prepared. She hates herself for making her child have to protect themselves from her. 

The ear plugs always mean a disagreement, they always mean they’ll end up gritting their teeth or blinking back tears. Yet the way that Dolores has avoided looking at her makes Pepa doubt it will be either of those, setting her fears into another deep dive.) 

As she presses them into her ears she flinches, already sensing a cloud at the edge of her vision, and her eyes squeeze shut, fingers tap-tap-tapping on the end of the plugs, hoping to drown out any future sound entirely. (Some things don't go away, like the heartbeat going triple time in her stomach, and she's not sure if it's real or she's imagining it, like so many other things).

Without any thought from Pepa, the temperature drops around them. It’s not enough for snow, not even for any sort of lasting frost. It is, however, enough for her to be able to see the air outline its exit from Dolores. It is a precautionary and learned fear that is broadcasting itself and she’s unable to pull it back. This time, the temperature drops enough that she’s tempted to wrap them in her blanket. Even if Dolores still has to wear those insufferable earplugs.

She doesn’t.

She waits.

"Mamá," she repeats, and steels herself, and her hands drop from her ears to clench tight in her skirt, reminding her that it's been getting a little tight around the waist. Those breaths come faster, and she yells more than murmurs, "you're going to be an abuela! ", punctuating with a helpless, dizzy 'hm! '

“Dolores?” She doesn’t doubt that Dolores is telling the truth, but there’s too many thoughts going through her mind. She wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. She wants to cover her face in kisses. She wants to demand she retrace her steps so she can narrow down exactly who was responsible. She wants to scream until her throat is hoarse because she’s failed. She’s failed. She failed to set an example and to make sure Dolores followed through on them. She’s failed. And her daughter is having to pay the price. The wind is starting to pick up, ruffling their hair but not doling any damage above chapped lips.

“I-I– you don’t–” Don’t think it’s true? Don’t want it? Don’t want the father involved? Don’t want anyone else to know? (But most likely, it was going to be, “Don’t you trust me?”) “Was it…” This was harder, her eyes daring over Dolores’ form and trying to remember how she’s been. Even with Julieta’s immediate gift of healing, things could slip through. “Fue un aprovechado?^[1]”

The chill has Dolores trembling, and she slumps forward, hugging herself protectively. She shuts her eyes, half against the wind, and half against the thought of looking in her mother's direction, trying to keep herself from breaking in a way she won't know how to fix, from being weak in front of the woman who has taught her to be strong, for better or worse.

She makes a wounded little sound in the back of her throat, shaking her head jerkily against the question, still so loud despite the plugs in her ears. "My fault, Mamá," she murmurs, an aborted half of a sentence, and releases the white knuckle grip she has on her own arm to splay her fingers over her stomach. “Cometí un error, y no coji ayuda.^[2]” She seems melancholy, but not otherwise traumatized, and her words betray no more than their actual meaning— nothing untoward has happened to her besides what she wanted to happen, minus the actual pregnancy in the first place.

"I'm so.." her voice raises in pitch, bordering on hysterics, and finally she wrenches her eyes open, looking pleadingly, desperately up at Pepa. She's practically still a child, and doesn't know what to do with a child herself. "I failed, as a daughter, as a woman, as a— as a Madrigal, and I want to be a mamá but it's so fast, it's been over a month since I heard their heart beat for the first time and now I'm showing and I love them so much but I'm so, so, so scared, and," raggedly she gasps, her chest heaving with panic, and her fingers tap a 1-2-3-4-5 rhythm on her belly, another mirror of the ghost of an uncle she only half-knows.

"And I'm sorry," and there are the waterworks, fat tears flowing down her face like she's that quiet child again, weeping from a scraped knee or a papercut or a ripped stuffed animal, face contorting in a cry she can't school Isabela-pretty.

Chapter Text

Pepa has never been able to handle tears from her children. As much as she's encouraged them to learn to stand on their own two feet, even as she’s taking steps to grant them more independence, tears are the quickest way to break her down. In the midst of any argument, if she saw Dolores’ eyes start to shine, Pepa’s winds would die down and she would rush to move them forward. Be it in the form of bringing her daughter’s head to rest atop her heart, or stroking back her loose curls – Pepa could deal with sharp words and fiery glares, but tears tumbled her.

It is no different now. Her anxious winds cease as she cups Dolores’ face in her hands, calming murmurs spilling from her lips as she presses their foreheads together. Her thumbs wipe at the tears, her panicked breaths echoing Pepa’s heartbeat. She can’t gather her own composure enough to steady her racing breaths, temperature continuing to drop as her thoughts spiral. Pepa separates them only briefly, grabbing the blanket bundled to the bed’s corner and wrapping Dolores in it. Once she has the fabric pulled tightly around her she kisses Dolores’ forehead and hugs her as close as she can with her protruding stomach.

Mercifully, the baby has remained calm through Pepa’s mood drop and she prays they will remain so until she can get Dolores calm as well.

With an arm wrapped around her daughter’s back and keeping her close, Pepa presses another kiss atop Dolores’ head. Gentle snowfall has begun to decorate the room, a clear indicator of the fear eating Pepa up from the inside out. Not for the first time in her life does she hate her gift. Dolores had anticipated thunder, had expected her anger instead of any sympathy. Her cold had made her child huddle into herself, still not asking for her, still keeping her away even as she shivered beside her. It is yet another reminder of her failures, and she can only wonder which ones ended up spurring Dolores so far away that they’d ended up here. How far back does the line of culpability run?

Oh God, how is she going to tell her mother?

No. No, that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how Alma has gotten colder, fiercer in her determination that they earn the miracle than even in Pepa’s youth. She might be Alma’s daughter, but she was Dolores’ mother before that. Her daughter was already weeping, asking for a forgiveness she should have known Pepa would always give – she won’t bend to Alma’s demands here.

Now, especially, Dolores finds she misses being a child. She's not like most people, who long for the days of being carefree just as often as they breathe; she can usually find her footing in the present, too focused on listening out for everything occurring at once. But as a child, she really had had it easier, had been able to get away with being 'weird' and unresponsive, and was cuddled to her mother's comforting chest without a care in the world, tracing shapes along the soft fabric of her dress, listening to her steady heart and soft humming.

Rather than comforted, she feels unmoored, eyes rabbit wide (and heart running rabbit-fast, rivaling even that of her baby) as her mami tries to soothe her. She continues to cry almost without noticing it, shuddering in breaths that feel more like gasps than anything else, her head already beginning to pound with the beginning of a headache. She knows, objectively, this is good for neither of them, with Pepa's history of heartbreak in the fertility department, and her own general aura of constant stress. She's weighing them both down, and she needs to reclaim her calm before she hurts someone in a way she can't fix.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Pepa whispers, a steely determination settling. “Lo siento, mi vida, debí- I should have been here for you.” Her eyes close on a sigh, hating the memories of their arguments that if not ending in tears, ending with either stalking away or Félix playing mediator. The trail of fault must start there, if nowhere else. “Lo siento, lo siento tanto y— I’m here, Dolores, I’m here for you.”

“Don't be sorry," she whispers, and despite the earplugs she can still hear the quiet rush of snowfall, focusing on it rather than the four heartbeats filling her head and worsening the ache. "I was a bad daughter, and, and a bad sister, and.." the fingers still resting gingerly on her mother's stomach curl careful into her dress, worrying the fabric one fingertip at a time, "I think I might be a bad mamá, too, for making a child without reason, for.." for daring to play God with someone she did not originally love, to search anxiously for a way to fix her problem after it had begun.

Apologies continue to tumble out of her mouth like they're her first language, and one of her hands holds the blanket around her from the inside, the other snaking between them to press her fingertips carefully to her mother's stomach, an apology in its own right. "I'm, I," and she sobs, her shoulders drawing nearly up to her ears, leaning more heavily against Pepa. "I just wanted to do something that would make me feel grown." Admitting this feels like being caught red-handed, like she's got a hand in the cookie jar rather than a bun in her oven. It's so childish, and she regrets it, but cannot bring herself to regret the child she's going to have to raise.

It breaks Pepa's heart, that her daughter had to search for justification elsewhere. To feel grown. Not even a full year since her quinceñero had passed, a modest selection of suitors had steadily flowed into Casa Madrigal asking for permission. Pepa had thought that would elevate Dolores’ independence well enough on its own, not to count the sprinkling of additional duties agreed upon by her and Alma. Where had she lost touch with her daughter? Where did she miss her need for a different independence, for a conversation on what it meant to become an adult?

It was too often that Pepa felt she wasn’t speaking clearly to Dolores, unable to follow the same connections her daughter made. It had been a struggle for her is still a struggle for her. Pepa would say, ‘Turn left,’ only for Dolores to remain immobile and ask, ‘Should I run?’. Trying to decipher her thought process would leave Pepa only more aggravated, cloud looming with flashes of withheld lightning, and rarely did she successfully decode her intentions. Never had she thought those gaps would have driven Dolores to such actions. 

Yet another failure on Pepa’s shoulders, and she can’t even throw it onto Alma. This was all her own doing.

“I’ll-I’ll have to talk to your father, once he returns, and we’ll.” Her words get stuck, winds picking up again as she thinks, worries, about her husband. He is an honorable man, and for all his kindness, she knew he could be fierce against those who wronged his family. She jsn’t worried for how he would treat her or their daughter, (not if he wanted to keep Pepa for not even his love was higher than her children) but for the hunt on the man who’d done this to her.

Boy. Please, she hopes it was a boy that she’d gotten involved with. It would make it easier to mitigate, easier for them to wield control. It makes her a little sick to think like that, how quickly her mind goes down that path. But that was what it meant to be a Madrigal - to keep control.

Pepa clears her throat and consciously loosens her hold on Dolores. She turns and tilts Dolores’ chin up on a bent finger. A smile, not quite sad, not yet resigned, but somehow loving as her eyes remain soft with unlifted cheeks, finds its way out. “We’ll work together on this, muñeca.”

The mention of her father makes her tears double, but her breathing is less panicked and more wracked with sobs; it's hard to take in the air anyways, but she's trying her best to think critically. "Please.. Papi is going to worry, I can't— I've already made you worried, and you're going to have a baby, I'm so sorry, I keep hurting you even though I've been trying so hard not to," it does not take much for her head to tip up towards Pepa, and she's distantly aware she must look like a toddler, weeping and snotting and shuddering. "I can't make you help," she breathes, trying to smile back, though it's tinged with melancholy. "It's not fair for you to fix my mess."

“Dolores,” she coos as her free hand comes up to wipe at her tears, “you’re not making me help if you ask for help.” Her winds slow, her snowfall ceasing along with it. The temperature remains cold enough that the snow gathered on them remains firm, and the clouds imperceptibly high above them darken ever slightly. “Haven’t you learned that by now?” Years of holding Dolores up, of pushing her forward, of remaining close enough to pick her up as she tripped along. And yet, Dolores seemed insistent on ignoring that.

She was in her arms, crying her heart out, admitting her fears on the cards life had given her, and yet–? Had Pepa been that cold a mother? Had Pepa missed that many clues to Dolores’ emotional turbulence? How many times had Pepa let her fall and missed it, noticing only how her eldest kept moving forward and thinking it resolved? She was supposed to do a better job than her mother, working to not let her children feel isolated, to not be suffocated with expectations. Yet, she’d apparently become as distant– No, more distant than Alma. Even Pepa knew she would have been able to rely on Alma to find a resolution should she end up begging for one.

“No eres una cabeza hueca, Dolores.^[3] If something isn’t fair, then that’s not something we ask for. Asking for help isn’t that, piensa.” Pepa sighs, gently removing her finger from under Dolores’ chin. She busies herself with brushing off the snow gathered atop Dolores, but making sure to not shift away from her hold on her dress. “We’ll work together. Me, Papi,” her voice is tight as she says the next name, “Abuela.”

“There’s no fixing this, not-not in any,” she clears her throat as the words get stuck. There was a way to ‘fix’ such consequences, ways that if Julieta wouldn’t help with, Pepa knew there would be someone else who’s discretion could be bought in favors. But she can’t say it, and that fear that Dolores would misconstrue her words spikes with the faint glow of lightning above them. 

“There’s no fixing this. Papi should be back soon and it would be best if we knew what options to discuss. So tell me,” she covered Dolores’ hand with her own and flattened it atop the curve of her belly, baby still only turning over and undetectable by outside touch, “what do you want to do?”

Chapter Text

If Dolores knew how Pepa was feeling about all this, she was sure she'd feel worse. Even though their true intentions were often lost in translation, she loved her mother, and was confident in knowing her mother loved her. She just tended to feel.. left behind, in the whirlwind of the house, with so many people younger than her who needed so much more attention. Not to mention the fact that Pepa had slowly been pulling away, in terms of brushing her off when she made a mistake. It was part of being grown, but it still felt raw.

She understands what's being said to her, but it all feels muffled, and not just by the earplugs. She could just ask for help. It makes the most sense. There's a very big part of her that wants to relent, to just shut off her brain and let her mami make all the big choices, but there's another part that knows that that's not something she can afford, not now, and probably not ever again.

"Mami," her voice comes out in a whisper, and her fingers are still rubbing a back-and-forth into Pepa's dress, keeping her grounded enough to steel herself. "I'm scared to ask for help. I don't want to hurt you, or.." She tips her head in a vague nod in the direction of the louder of the two heartbeats pressed between her own and her mother's, thankfully steady despite its speed (it's faster than her baby's, is it supposed to be that way? Is that something she should ask about? There's so much she does not know, and is frankly kind of embarrassed to talk about in the first place). "I know how much trouble you.. you've had. I don't want to add to that." Below the blanket, she crosses herself as subtly as she can manage, not as in tune with religion as others in her family but still yearning for something to make her feel safe.

The next question has her taking pause, blinking in something like confusion as she is forced to consider what she's mostly been putting off for about a month and a half. She's always known she's wanted to be a mother, but having to consider her options now feels like drowning. "What I want."

She blinks owlishly, a holdover from her childhood of staring in silence, and just sits with her breaths for a while, managing to rein herself in as she considers her choices. She can't bear to send her child to death, not after they've grown on her both literally and metaphorically, so she writes that much off with a shudder that almost produces a new round of tears. "Is it selfish to want to try? To.. to raise my baby. I'm," she counts on her fingers for a moment, tapping one at a time with the hand trapped under her mami's. "I've got a while left to go, but I already want to give them the world. I don't know if I'll be able to let them go after.. after everything else that's going to happen." She bites her cheek and winces at the slight pain, feeling a wave of nausea unprovoked at the thought of having to give up her child after getting so attached.

Something reminds her that this is not in her hands, that despite being considered a woman she isn't really there yet, still has to yield to her mother and will for the rest of her days, and she dips her head quickly, murmurs, "it's your choice. If you think I shouldn't keep my baby, I just want to know now, before it hurts more."

“If I think?” Her tone isn’t easy to place. It’s somewhere between insulted and incredulous, and her weather is of no help. The wind and snowfall remain gone, but the gray skies above don’t lighten up. The chill still keeps the snow intact, its own type of blanket on the bed and floor around them, and stings at her fingertips even as she keeps them over Dolores’.

“Hija, what I think doesn’t matter now. All I will think is how to help you do what you want.” A hand reaches out and tilts Dolores’ head up by the chin, the second time such a gesture is done yet no less gentle in its movement. “If you’re set on becoming a mother, that’s the first thing to learn. As a mother, you’re going to be there to support above anything else. You can guide, try to change their minds, but at the end of the day, your child will need your help. That’s all you’ll always be able to offer and what you should always have.”

“And this isn’t something that will,” she winces slightly but pushes the words out regardless, “affect me. It’s going to be your baby, Dolores, your body, your reputation, your social life, everything will go back on you. I will always,” Pepa stresses as her hand unfurls to cup Dolores’ cheek, her tone warming into clear compassion as the chill eases off, “help you. That’s my choice. Motherhood isn’t easy, pregnancy,” the hand that was still atop her daughter’s as it rested on her belly squeezed, “isn’t easy, but if you’re willing to put in the effort – I’ll help you.”

“If you have no one else on your side, you’ll always have me. I don’t doubt you’ll try your best to be a good mother, especially if you already love them. So, no, it wouldn’t be selfish. Pero recuerda, no va ser fácil.^[4]”

For once in a long time, Dolores feels a sort of kinship with her mother; Pepa understands motherhood more innately than Dolores possibly ever will, but in and of itself, that fact is comforting, rather than stifling. She's still scared, but her mami is putting in leaps and bounds of effort, trying to meet her more than halfway for once. And she wants to place her heart in Pepa's hands, to regain that endless trust she had when she was still just a child. So she leans into that sweet touch, and she pulls their combined hands to her own stomach hidden under the blanket, whispering, "I don't know how to do all this, but I know I need you there."