Dollhouse
Summary: Madeline hid a much darker secret from her daughter. A secret that sheds an inkling on what made Nina the way she is.
Warnings: Mentions of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and murder.
Author's Note: This isn't long. It just comes from speculation I made with another person of what could've possibly caused Nina's mental illness. I'm not claiming this to be correct. I have, however, noticed the similarities between Claudia/Johnny's relationship(which, we later found out they were mother and son) and Nina/Nathan's.
Madeline Reeves sighed as she entered the house, carrying shopping bags on each arm. She'd enjoyed the weekend away at the spa. She'd needed it.
She headed up the stairs to put her things away and to take the items she'd gotten for her fourteen year old daughter, Nina to her.
It was after she'd put her new clothes away and began to walk down the hall that she realized that something was off. Her daughter's door which was usually kept open during the day time was tightly shut and as she came closer, she could hear frantic sobbing. She frowned at that and slowly turned the knob.
The sight before made her eyes widen in horror and she felt anger rise in her chest, clenching at her heart. Her daughter was on the bed, completely naked and her hands clenched tightly in the fabric of her comforter. Her eyes squeezed shut as tears spilled down her too bruised face. But worst of all was her husband, her little girl's father moving over her.
Madeline didn't even know what she was doing as she grabbed the closest thing to her, the baseball bat that she'd always wanted to get rid of, but that she was now so thankful that her daughter hadn't. And she slowly moved closer to the bed before she swung the bat at her husband's head as hard as she could, hearing the sickening crack.
The move caused the man-the monster to fall off the bed giving Nina the freedom to scramble to the headboard, sheet pulled to her chest as tearful eyes stare at the scene before her blankly.
Madeline pays her little girl no mind, pratically on auto pilot as she strikes her husband with the bat repeatedly until he stops moving and his face his bloodied and bruised. His blood began to sink into the plus carpeting as she finally stopped, dropping the bat at her side and moving to hug her little girl to her. She pulled away to cup her daughter's cheeks. "Listen, Nina. I need you to grab a bag, okay?" She whispered, making her daughter look at her, paying no mind to the wide, blank eyes staring at nothing. "I'll get you some clothes and I want you to call Janie and ask her if you can stay there for a few days. I'm goint to take care of everything."
Nina didn't say a word as she grabbed her back before heading down the stairs to make the call
After she'd dropped her daughter off, Madeline came back home and stared at her husband's body, still lying on the floor of her daughter's room. She didn't feel guilty at all for what she'd done. She only felt bad that she hadn't known before now what he'd been doing to their child. Slowly, she reached for the phone on her daughter's bedside table and dialed a number she hadn't called in a few years.
It just took a few moments before the familiar voice of her sister, Liesel filled the phone and Madeline just whispered, "I need your help." Before she hung up the phone.
It was a few hours later and already dark out when she heard the front door open and footsteps walk up the stairs.
Liesel was too shocked to say a word as she slowly began to help clean up the mess, not seeming to care about the blood she got on her clothes.
They got rid of the body at two in the morning, getting rid of the body at the local river before they came back to the house and began to tear out the carpet, both woman feeling grateful for the hardwood floor underneath.
It had been four weeks since the event and her husband's body had yet to be found for which she felt grateful. She felt even more relief when it seemed as if her daughter had blocked what had occured from her mind. That was until she took her daughter for a checkup and found out Nina was pregnant.
It took a lot to fake a pregnancy but it was surprisingly easy to make Nina believe that James was her brother and not her son. Somehow, even decades later, her daughter didn't seem to realize it, despite how close her two kids, now both adults were to each other.
Because of her own mistakes, they wanted nothing to do with her. And she couldn't blame them. She hadn't been the best mother. But she knew that at least one point of time, she did the best thing she could for her family. She made sure that her children wouldn't be destroyed.