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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO lamb to the slaughter
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
THE DAY NADINE learned about the death of Reginald Hargreeves—which led to her accosting the Hargreeves siblings at his funeral, a decision that ended up being simultaneously the best and worst one she'd made in her life—she'd thought about the bond between mother and child, and why the one between her and Louise had always been so strained. Back then, she'd compared mothers to robots, programmed to love the children they'd conceived the moment they first laid eyes on them. It's a necessary process, as humans, unlike other species, are born helpless, unable to walk or talk or even feed themselves on their own (which is due to the fact that humans are all technically born prematurely so their heads can actually be extracted from a mother's womb). An infant needs its mother in order to survive, needs her to nurse it until it develops the necessary functions itself. Without it—or, at least, without any parental figure—it is destined to die.
Back then, Nadine had wondered if the miraculous conditions of her birth had led to that strain. She hadn't lived inside her mother for nine months, developing and growing from a clump of cells to a human being of her own right. Instead, she'd just sprung into existence, filling Louise's stomach like a creature right out of a horror film. So, of course, that programming wouldn't have been instated. Nadine's birth hadn't been natural. Her mother's body didn't have time to develop those parental instincts.
Thinking back to it, though, Nadine wasn't exactly sure if that was true. A mother didn't need to nurse a child herself in order to love them. After all, if that was the case, then the love between parents who used surrogates and adoption would be less real. That was a dangerous way of thinking, and veered deep into the idea that the only real family was the nuclear one—heterosexual parents and 'properly conceived' children.
So, no, Nadine's mother wasn't just missing some instincts she'd been supposed to develop. She was just a horrible person, one who claimed she wanted children but then mistreated them when they arrived. And maybe a lot of her animosity to Nadine stemmed from her abilities—normal children couldn't form butterflies and bees out of nowhere, after all, and all Louise wanted was a normal child—but, perhaps, if she'd had someone who wasn't Nadine—a child born in perfectly ordinary conditions, with nothing so supernatural about them—she would've found something else to hate. Maybe they wouldn't want to be dressed up like a doll and paraded in front of others like a show donkey. Maybe they wore ripped jeans instead of skirts and listened to heavy metal instead of classical. Maybe they would be transgender or nonbinary or, God forbid, asexual. Anything that broke Louise's mould of what a child should've been like... well, they'd be kicked to the curb, too.
At least, Nadine hoped, because then it would mean that she wasn't just born wrong.
That was what Viktor had been saying, anyway, when Nadine had first believed that Sabine's mother—and, God, both of them had probably been snuffed out of existence by now—was Louise. That it was Louise's fault, not hers. That some people were just not meant to be parents, even if they believed they wanted to. And Louise Vidal—and Reginald Hargreeves and The Handler—was a part of that group.
