Irreplaceable

Part 22: Resolution for a mother

The feeling you get the first time you hold your child, it's something indescribable, or so people say. Indescribable joy, love, warmth. All kinds of emotions. Positive mostly.

Hancock is a mother. It's her past she tried to run away from and it's part of her future, though her past doesn't come up as often anymore. Even when some reporter does bring it up, she's learned to deal with it amicably. It wasn't so in the past, as she had been consumed by her own bitterness and anger, something she isn't proud of.  As easy as it would be to explain everything with her depression, she knows it's not the whole truth, just as solely blaming Mihawk wasn't either. She does her best to correct her past error in new interviews, though no-one really cares about her ex-husband anymore. Now-a-days people concentrate on Ace and Dragon, because they are relevant, but she does her best to keep them out of the spotlight.

Part of her feels blessed that she looks so alike to Ace, yet isn't related by blood, so people think she truly is his mother. If they ask those questions many mother hear countless times, she can just avoid answering by telling them he's her stepson. Her wonderful son she loves with all her heart even if they've been a family so little time. The way she thinks about Ace makes her stop sometimes and think about her son with Mihawk. She thinks of how everything could have been so much different, had she sought out help earlier, if everything had been normal.
But it wasn't normal, and she knows it can never be.

So when people ask her how she felt first time holding her child, it's not Ace who rises in her mind, but her son. So she answers that it was indescribable and they just assume she was happy, though she knows very well what she felt that day all those years ago.

But it's not socially acceptable to say it was mostly negative.

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The air feels still in the hot room. A fan slowly spins as her head spins from exhaustion. People around her speak hurriedly, but she cannot hear them or see what they're doing. She wants a glass of water as sweat runs down her forehead. She tries to ask a nurse for some, but no words come out. Why did she have them drive her husband out, he would be giving her a glass of water without asking. He would be so happy for her having completed her duty, he would do anything for her. Anything-

Her thoughts are interrupted, by the room being filled with a deafening wailing and sighs of relief. She doesn't understand what is so good about the awful noise, her child doesn't sound like that.

She swallows when a nurse comes to her carefully holding the source of noise on her arms. She congratulates her and passes the screaming thing to her. Little bit curious she takes a look at the creature given to her and she wants to scream.

This thing is not what was inside her. This is not the long waited beautiful child that would fix everything. She wants her real baby, not this red and purple thing first screaming and now gnawing on her breast. Just holding it is making her insides turn and it makes her nauseous.

She starts to cry and finally her husband is allowed in. He dashes over to her and the thing. She trusts him to know for sure, that this is not their child and to take action to find where they've hidden the real one. But the way he looks at the creature, she can see a sparkle in his eyes. The same sparkle, that led her to keep the child in the first place. It was his look of love she has wanted for herself for so long. While he looks at the lump of flesh in her arms, at times he glances at her and she feels that some of that love might be directed at her after all. She was certain of it, when he softly caressed her hand, smiling the happiest smile he had, and thanked her, before pressing a careful soft kiss on her cheek.

But as the lump of flesh grew and started to walk and talk, the more obvious it was that the sparkle was never directed at her. Only at the being, that was not really their child. Or maybe something so disgusting could only be born of a love so twisted.