☆Madeline Usher Defender

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Hours had passed before Madeline made a move to leave the rotting house. The fire had long ago stopped burning, and she just sat there. 

Cold. 

Alone. 

Furious. The longer she sat there the more angry she got. 

“How dare she?” Madeline thought as she stood up to leave. 

“A fucking poem for some goddamn clarity.” she mumbled aloud as she reached the car.

She was in a trance-like state the whole drive into the city, the conversation playing over and over in her head. 

“Who you could have been.” 

“Your brother, you know what he would have been? A poet.”

“That was cruel. I apologize.”

“A stunt-” 

“Missus Usher?” She's pulled from the thought by some parking garage attendant.

“You are good to go through, ma'am.” He looks scared. If she wasn't desperate to get up to her house she might stay and taunt him a bit. Instead, she brushes him off with a quick “Yeah, thanks” and drives off to her designated spot and into the elevator.

She's so stuck in the conversation she half expects the elevator door to open up to a rotted house that really ought to be bulldozed. Ding. It opens to a pristine foyer and she's relieved. Immediately pulling off the layers that didn't do much to protect her from the cold of the house anyway. Making her way through the large house, she stops by the bar cart and pours a glass of some whiskey. It's no Henri IV but it will take the edge off and that's what she needs. It doesn’t hit her till she’s  in the elevator how truly exhausted she is. She had been tired before, but this was different. This tiredness went bone deep. She feels like she could sleep for years. 

She lets the whiskey warm her as she makes her way to her bedroom, basking in the silence the empty house offers. She enjoys it. When she was married, all her husbands wanted to do was talk. And fuck. She hated it, the small talk and the constant noise they made. She enjoyed being alone with her thoughts. She sets the glass on the vanity and moves to the bathroom. She feels dirty. Like somehow the dirt and grime of her childhood home had penetrated her clothes and stained her skin. She runs a hot shower letting the warmth of the water relax the tension in her aching muscles. She scrubs until smooth white skin is reddened. She runs her shampoo through her hair. 

“You're in pain. You're exhausted. Uncertain. Frightened.”

The memory washes over her like ice water. She had seen her. Just like she had all those years ago at the bar. She had seen that she was so hungry for power then and so scared of it now. She finishes her shower more tense than she had started it. And colder somehow despite the warmth. She forces the thought down as she moves toward the sink to brush her teeth. She comes up from rinsing, and swipes the condensation from the mirror.

“Some clarity.”

Madeline looked in the mirror, surveying the damage that time and lack of sleep have done to her face. It's not much. By all means and measures she's aged well. But sometimes she looks in the mirror and can see her younger self. So full of passion and drive. Of fury at an unjust world. If she looks closer she can still see the grief that made itself visible at such an early age. Sometimes she looks in the mirror and does not recognize the woman looking back at her.

“I know who you are,”

 “And were,”

“And who you could have been.”

“That's enough. Pull it together, you are Madeline FUCKING Usher. It was a long time ago. Get over it.”

she stuns herself with the audible admonishment. But she's right. Of course she is. Why go dwelling on the past and all its possibilities when she had done well for herself in this lifetime? Maybe because of the grief, maybe in spite of it. Does it really matter?

Madeline walks out of the bathroom and away from whatever version of herself was in the mirror tonight. Once she gets to the large closet across the room, she pulls on a deep purple silk nightgown. 

“You're one of my favorites.”

What did that even mean? One of? She had other favorites? She wasn't THE favorite? Why not? That also doesn't matter. Not now anyway. The only thing that mattered right now was getting into her bed and drifting far from today. Yes, sleep would fix her. She closed her eyes and waited for the dark to get heavy and drag her deeper into unconsciousness. She waited.

And waited. 

 And it echos off the fucking walls. 

“Who you could have been.” 

“Could have been.”

“They break my heart.”

“A collection of impeccable masks in orbit of a stunted heart.”

“A stunted heart.”

And she's back at the mirror. Well, almost. In one of the millions of drawers in her bathroom there's some ambien. A whole prescription from the last time she had a bad stretch of insomnia induced by nightmares. She hated it and refused to take it. She only even had it because she was almost incoherent one night at Rodericks house. He had been worried and insisted on calling his doctor. She wanted to kill him. She had taken it before, a long time ago around the time coincidentally of one of her husbands. But it was different then. Then she could wake up in a cold sweat and not be alone reeling from the nightmares it gave her.

The interesting thing about being COO of a pharmaceutical company is that Madeline hates prescription drugs. Mainly sleeping pills. Something about having no control over your consciousness makes her uneasy. But nevertheless she had them and it was either take the pills or not sleep and she was just so tired. 

She took one. She would deal with the nightmares later but for now she would get a few hours of sleep. And that's what she needed. 

Lying peacefully in her bed she drifted off to sleep.

Madeline wakes up in her childhood bedroom and is a bit confused. She wanders around for a bit and comes up to the window, where she sees the dirt, that empty casket. It is thundering outside.

“...Mom?” Madeline hears herself call out in a shaky voice that hasn't been her own in so long. She wants to go to her but she can't seem to move. It doesn't matter anyway because with the next flash of lighting her mother is just inches from her. Close enough to see the tears well up in her bright green eyes.

 “What is it, Madeline?” The contrast between how softly the question is asked and how frightening her mother looks makes her pause. 

“I don't know what to do.” It comes out softly. Like a child telling their parents they are scared of the monster in their closet. 

“About what?”

“Just… everything. I thought I knew what to do but I'm so unsure, and I'm so…afraid.”  

“Afraid of what, Maddie?” 

“I… I just wanted to protect us. To protect him. I tried, Mom, I really tried but I just couldn't and he's sick now and I just wanted to- I just wanted to protect him.” A tear falls freely and the flood gates open. The house shakes with the thunder as she shakes with her sobs.

“Oh Madeline, that always was your problem. You wanted and wanted, and you had to have more and look what you got from it. Your husband's all left you. You don't have any kids. No one to love you.” Madeline’s mother eyes her expensive night clothes. “You have all this fancy stuff, but you're all alone. Roddy, he's got family. People love him, but you?” She pokes Madeline’s chest, right above where her heart lies. The dirt covering her hands gets on Madeline’s silk shirt. “All you've got is this stunted heart…that can't love, or be loved." 

She hears the line echoed behind her and turns to find Roderick. Hurt by this betrayal after all she's done for him she doesn't have time to fire back some quick remark before she hears it again from the other side of the room. Verna stands behind her mother and soon it's a choir of all the people she's ever known repeating it. And it's so loud and she's so cold and she just wants it to stop. It's like her feet are stuck to the floor and she can't move past them. Her heartbeat sounds like thunder in her ears. Her tears fall like heavy raindrops.

“Please stop. I'm sorry. Please make it stop. Just make it stop. Please-” 

Madeline jolts upwards. She’s awake.

For a moment no noise can be heard in that room but her shaky breaths. She shivers, and for some reason it dawns on her how alone she is. She thinks for a bit: “Look at everything I own, look at this house, this massive bedroom. and yet, I still feel so cold.”

And then she starts to think about Roderick and her mother. She’s always liked him more than her. Nothing Madeline ever did could change that…and there they were, teaming up against her, taunting her, as they always really did. Their words echo in her mind, even though the dream has been long gone by now.

Masks….. A stunted heart…

Madeline sits with that. “A stunted heart…”

She can feel it getting harder to breathe, she can feel her vision getting blurry. “This is not happening..” She buries her head in her arms and breathes in deeply. She closes her eyes. She sees nothing but darkness, until a cold shiver runs through her. She imagines Verna. She imagines Verna turning towards her and smiling that smile, that wide toothy grin that always unnerved her.

“You see? I'm not the only one that thinks so.”

“Stop,” Madeline calls out weakly. This does not change Verna's demeanor. 

“Poor, poor Madeline.” she saunters towards her. “You were the daughter of a great man. A powerful man. You were an Usher. And look at you now.” she shakes her head, as if this was amusing to her. “Cold, alone, and broken.” Madeline can feel the tears start to fall.

Verna's face turns serious. “Although it’s always been like that, hasn’t it? You kept trying to distract yourself with money and other people’s admiration, when deep down you knew. You knew what you were. And you still know, don’t you?”

Madeline gasps for air. It doesn't help much. She can hear her own sobs at this point. She imagines what her mother would say.

“Coward. you’re a coward, Madeline.” 

This breaks any care she had before about showing her emotions this way. She screams out into the darkness. It’s an ugly sound, but it’s a real one. 

She covers her mouth, stunned, and stops for a second. She felt a soft touch on her shoulder.

“Oh, sweetie.” It’s Verna’s voice.

Madeline's eyes widen. She immediately tries to wipe her tears away as she moves away from the entity.

“I…..” Madeline turns to Verna. She has trouble looking directly into her eyes. Verna shakes her head ever so slightly, as if she is in awe about something. She says nothing.

And then…”I'm so sorry, Madeline.”

In one quick move, Madeline reaches for Verna, who immediately takes her and pulls her closer to her. Madeline lays her head on Verna's chest and lets the tears fall freely as Verna starts to stroke her hair.

Madeline feels something small and wet fall on her cheek. She hears a tiny, shaky breath above her.

“I'm so sorry,” Verna repeats. Madeline's shaky sobs continue until she feels something below her.

A rhythm. A heartbeat.

How did she…

“Madeline, try to focus on my heartbeat,” Verna whispers.

Madeline lets her eyes flutter shut as she just listens. She can feel herself calming down.

Her breathing evens out.

She can start to feel a light weight on her, the feeling that lets her know that she is tired. A flash of her mother appears in her mind. “I don’t...I don’t want to go back there,” Madeline confesses, her voice breaking a little.

Verna caresses Madeline's cheek with her thumb. “Shhh…it’s okay. I'm with you. Rest.”

op was literally talking about cillian murphy but ok