Helen opened her eyes. The digital clock on the night table showed 2.30am, but the glistening eyes facing her in the dark were wide open and very much awake.
"Sophie?"
Her daughter was standing next to her bed, Barnie the monkey safely secured around her neck, fumbling her "bedtime is not a-peeling" banana pajamas – curtesy of Abby as Sophie seemed to be utterly unable to nap. She was obviously distraught, but had been very silent until Helen had finally registered a presence in her sleep. The small lips of the three year old quivered in the dark when Helen spoke her name and a single tear rolled down her baby cheek.
"What's wrong?" Helen asked as she put her table lamp on, now fully awake.
"Mommy…" Sophie uttered in between sobs and sniffles. "Are you okay?"
Her pleading gaze was too much to handle and Helen extended her arms for her daughter to melt into her. The toddler climbed on the bed and crawled into the safety of her mother's arms.
"I'm absolutely fine, honey. But what are those tears? Did you have a nightmare?"
Helen felt more than she saw her nod against her chest.
"You were crying." She said.
Helen rubbed the child's back soothingly, rocking their bodies lightly to soothe Sophie.
"It happens. Do you know what I was crying about?" She asked as the toddler calming down, her sobs receding under her mother's ministration.
"Who is Ashley?"
Helen's blood ran cold. There she was. She had told Sophie a lot about Ashley when she was still a baby. Will had warned her against keeping Ashley a taboo with her younger daughter. It was the sensible thing to do and she had spent quite a lot of time reminiscing aloud while nursing Sophie or to lull her to sleep. Sometimes, the baby's face had mimicked her own as she recalled a happy memory, and she had felt good about sharing all of her stories.
But when Sophie had started to talk, their one-sided conversation had reached an abrupt end, as Helen feared her questions. She was fine with talking about Ashley whenever she decided to, controlling whom she told and the context. A toddler's curiosity, however, was not something that could be controlled.
In the safety of her bedroom, with Sophie in her lap, she felt it was high time to face her apprehensions.
"Ashley was your big sister." Helen answered with a lump in her throat.
Sophie disentangled herself from her tight hug and looked at her face, her big grey eyes scrutinizing her traits.
"I have a sister? How big?" She wondered, looking skeptical, as if wondering whether she would have to share her toys.
Helen stroked her cheek with the palm of a loving hand.
"She would be thirty-one."
Thirty-one… She could have been Sophie's mother, Helen mused. What kind of mother would she have been? She could almost picture Ashley asking her for advice, recognizing the patience she had demonstrated raising her.
"That's big." The kid concluded, making Helen smile.
"Almost as big as Henry." She confirmed.
"And you."
Helen chuckled.
"Oh darling I'm way older than Henry. You know I adopted him when he was a child."
Sophie nodded, and silence fell between them.
The toddler was processing the information, playing with her mother's shirt while Helen combed her soft curls with her fingers, waiting for her to speak again. She didn't have to wait long. Her daughter's gaze caught hers again with renewed curiosity.
"Where is she?"
There was no fear in Sophie's voice but Helen detected an ounce of shyness that made her think her daughter had already put two and two together, so to speak.
"She died before you were born." She said softly.
"Like the spider?"
She was referring to a spider Alice had crushed earlier that week, sparking tons of questions about death from Sophie. It had severed their friendship for… Oh, about twenty minutes. It had been such a blow to her that Archibald had had to go for a nap, her sadness crushing him. He had once explained to Helen that kids were less draining than adults to be around as an empath, their feelings being much more pure, less complex and messy than they would later become. It was a relief to see him so fond of his niece, spending hours in the library with her and reading her stories.
"Like the spider." Helen assented.
Sophie's stare fell on the picture frames on her mother's night table and she pointed at the one holding a picture of the blond girl and Helen messing with Henry.
"Ashley." She stated.
For a girl that was about to turn four, she was certainly very perceptive.
She had stared at that picture countless times during her pregnancy, wondering if it was really a healthy thing to do, keeping a picture of her deceased daughter so close to the place she would sleep, curling herself around her womb. But she had never dared to move it. It was still there now, next to a silver lined picture frame holding a picture of Nikola gazing at his newborn sleeping in his arms. The amount of awe and love contained in those eyes was enough to melt her heart and make her fall asleep feeling light with the knowledge that he would be there for Sophie were anything to happen to herself.
Helen took the frame in her hand and presented Ashley's picture to Sophie who took it gently, analyzing every trait of her sister.
"Were you sad?" she asked.
"I cried until I had no water left in me." Helen responded.
Her daughter's big grey eyes studied her face, and clouded, as if focusing on her inner thoughts.
"You were afraid." She finally said, a hand still clenching the picture frame as the other was glued to Helen's cheek, providing warmth to her skin.
That sounded more like an affirmation than a question, and Helen felt her stomach drop as the memory of her last conversation with Ashley came back to her mind, as vividly as if it had taken place moments before instead of more than a century ago. Ashley, I'm afraid.
"Yes. I loved her with all my heart and I was not sure I could live without her." She admitted, her voice catching in her throat. There were a few seconds of silence during which her words sank in and then she kissed the tip of Sophie's nose, smiling.
"But then, you showed up. And you make me feel very happy again. Even if I will always feel sad about losing Ashley."
Sophie's face lit up and she smacked her on the cheek, visibly proud to be her mother's ray of sunshine.
"Is daddy sad too?" The toddler wondered.
Helen pursed her lips. How was she going to explain the subtleties of their relationship to an almost four years old child? Where was Google when you needed it?
"He is sad to see me sad." She started. "But he was not Ashley's father; he did not know her much."
Sophie frowned. Weirdly enough, whereas Ashley's disappearance had seemed to go very smoothly, this data was harder for her to understand.
"Why?"
"Well… Your father and I met in school. We had a few friends in common. At the time, we were only friends, and I fell in love with a man, called John. He was Ashley's father."
Helen prayed that her explanations were enough.
It was obviously a lot to process for Sophie, who sat in her lap, once again staring at the picture frame silently.
"Is John dead too?" She finally asked.
Helen shrugged.
"I don't know, baby. He was not very nice to me so we parted ways." She stated as Sophie was interlacing their fingers and examining the palm of her hand.
"Daddy is nice to you, right?"
Helen snorted at her daughter's wondering face.
"He gets on my nerves a lot. But he is an amazing father and he is very nice to me. I'm lucky to have you both." She admitted.
Sophie smiled, content with her mother's answer, and Helen kissed the top of her head and hugged her tight.
"Can we go sleep with daddy?"
Had it been any other day, Helen would have said no. She was a firm believer that a parent had to get their child to understand that their bedroom was a safe place by never letting them sleep in the parental bedroom. But their conversation had drained what was left of her forces, and she longed for the emotional safety that Nikola seemed to provide her with. So she nodded, put the picture of Ashley on her bedside table, and rose from the bed, taking Sophie in her arms.
"She had a nightmare." Helen explained when Nikola opened his bedroom door, still wearing his undershirt, looking worried to see his girls in the hallway at such an hour of the night.
"But I'm better now. Mommy told me about my sister, Ashley." Sophie added, smiling from ear to ear.
Nikola's gaze searched Helen's face lovingly, trying to gauge her state of mind. She smiled faintly and sent him a reassuring look. He opened the door wide to let them into his inner sanctum. The room had not changed much since Helen had furnished it for him. The only personal touches were a gramophone he had stolen from her to listen to old jazz tunes, and a stash of fine vintages on a shelf above his desk. Yet it was cozy somehow. It smelled of him even though he didn't spend much time there. The bareness of the room would have made Helen uncomfortable, worried he would flee into the night, if his lab had not been so messy and clearly a long-term home to the great Nikola Tesla.
"We thought we would sleep with you tonight, if that's alright with you." Helen declared.
"Mi casa es tu casa, my dear." He answered, closing the door behind them with a wolfish grin.
When Sophie was safely tucked into bed and asleep between the two of them, her small body wrapped around her father's, Nikola looked tentatively at Helen.
"How are you, really?" He asked, his voice a mere whisper in the dark above the mess of curly hair that was his daughter.
Helen smiled and shifted to place a pillow on his extended arm, building a nest for herself to rest in his embrace.
"I'm exhausted. But I'm happy." She sighed, caressing his cheek softly.
"I'm sorry you have to go through this. Can I do anything?" He wondered, staring at her with the eyes Sophie had clearly inherited.
"Really, Nikola. It's fine. Sophie is satisfied with the short version of everything, for now at least."
As she talked, she drew his jawline with the tip of a finger, relishing in the intimacy of the moment, in the feeling that he was the closest thing she had to a soulmate. He was a pain in the arse by day, but when it came to their daughter, to that fleeting embodiment of the concept of family, Nikola was caring and sensitive. Sometimes painfully so.
"She's starting to question our relationship." He stated.
Helen shrugged. Of course the time would come when Sophie would harass them with questions about that. She would compare her parent's dynamic with Henry and Erika's or Will and Abby's and realize something was different.
"It's okay to admit we are lost." She said with a small smile.
Nikola grinned, getting so close to her that she felt his breath on her lips when he responded.
"I feel quite found, on the contrary."
Helen felt herself blush and she had to clear her throat, earning a victorious smile from her cheeky vampire.
"Goodnight, Nikola." She sighed, cutting their conversation short.
Of course Nikola had things to do, ideas to act upon, experiments to conduct. But when Helen fell asleep with her head against his and their legs intertwined, their daughter's body safely surrounded by their warmth, he decided that this was more important than his ideas. And the fuzzy feeling he felt when breathing in the scent of his girls felt even more energizing than any eight-hour sleep to his vampire senses.