PROLOGUE
a gift horse

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ON THE FIRST of October, 1989, in Dijon, France, Louise Vidal gave birth to a Trojan Horse. Or, in other words, a baby, rosy-cheeked and with the soft down of newly growing blonde hair on her head. Sweet and innocent, swathed in a pink blanket, waving her chubby fists into the air as her first cries filled the world. An angel, some may have called her. A miracle. But in actuality, much like the disguised gift horse filled to the brim with soldiers, the birth of Nadine Vidal was a problem in the shape of a shiny wrapped present.

It had been seven years since Louise and Beau got married, six since they decided they wanted children. It was a mutual decision that came almost simultaneously, on a casual day at the beach. They'd been watching a little girl laughing as her father tossed her into the water when they'd both turned to each other and confessed that they wanted a family like that.

Six years later, however, Louise's pregnancy tests had stubbornly remained negative. She didn't know what she was doing wrong. She'd gone to every doctor, every church, every pharmacy in an attempt to find a solution to her problem, but no amount of medication, prayers, or strange tonics had helped. It was like she was broken, and, judging by her family members and colleagues that often came up to her and asked when she'd be having children, it was like there was a neon sign on her head, proclaiming her failure for the world to see.

All she wanted was a child, but nothing she did was working.

Then came along the Trojan Horse.

Tonight, the restaurant was crowded, but Louise and Beau had nonetheless found a table in the back corner, near a set of fish tanks full of the aquatic creatures. Light chatter from the other patrons provided a nice ambiance, and classical music was pumped from the speakers on the ceiling. A single candle, lit in the centre of the table, provided warmth and an amber glow that illuminated the faces of the couple. Louise could see every freckle on her husband's face, the seafoam green intermingled with the ocean blue of his eyes, and the way his glasses perched daintily on the edge of his nose from her position across from him, and she thought she'd never met anyone so beautiful.

The couple sipped fancy wine and ate Bouillabaisse and duck confit as they celebrated their seventh anniversary. They'd both dressed up for the occasion—Louise in a wine-red dress that dipped at the hemline and flared out at the skirt, and Beau in a powder-blue suit and his hair slicked back with gel—and felt like they were in their twenties again. Louise leaned back in her chair, a smiling teasing at her lips as she twisted her pearl necklace in her hand. Tonight was a night to forget that she was broken, and so far, it'd been working. All she could think of was how lucky she was to have Beau Vidal.

Unfortunately, that sentiment was about to turn out like the set-up of some cosmic joke. In between sips of Le Newbie bloomed an agony in her abdomen akin to a knife slicing into her flesh. As what felt like several lacerations being carved into her skin began to burn like flames licking at her intestines, Louise thought she was floating.

In reality, she was falling.

She knocked over her glass of wine as she toppled off her chair, immediately creating a dark red stain that slowly spread across the white tablecloth, a mimic of the blood suddenly coursing out of her. A scream tore loose from her lips as her vision blurred, her gaze tracing up to the chandelier hanging above her. It was what she kept her eyes on as the contractions started, as the patrons of the restaurant gathered around the woman whose belly was now, somehow, swollen and round. With fancy napkins dabbing at her sweaty forehead and the squeeze of a bewildered Beau's hand, Louise Vidal gave birth to a baby girl right there, on the floor of the Lumière des Étoiles restaurant.

Unbeknownst to her—and all of the patrons that had watched her push out a tiny, flailing thing from the recess of her womb—she wasn't the only one to be afflicted with this strange condition, of giving birth when, only moments ago, she hadn't even been pregnant.

There were forty-two others like her, and Sir Reginald Hargreeves was interested in all of them.

He came by, later. To the hospital, which Beau had immediately gotten Louise to as soon as she'd pushed out this miracle child. On the way, Beau had kept squeezing Louise's hand as he looked down at the child in his wife's arms. It surely had to be theirs—the baby had the same eyes as Louise, the same long nose as him—but it was also impossible. Like flying pigs and the Gargouille, this baby shouldn't have existed.

They had just christened her Nadine Gabrielle Vidal when Reginald Hargreeves walked through the doors.

Louise was holding the newly christened Nadine in her arms—the Trojan Horse—rocking her back and forth and stroking her cheek. Beau sat beside Louise, clutching at her hand like it was a lifeline and trying to get over the substantial amount of shock that had been heaped over him in the past four hours. His mind was whirling; trying to come up with a theory as to how a previously un-pregnant Louise had suddenly birthed a kid. He eventually came to the conclusion that Nadine was a gift from God.

Enter Reginald Hargreeves, wearing his trademark monocle and trailed by a cohort of curious doctors and nurses who'd never seen the eccentric billionaire in person before. He paid them no mind—in fact, he acted as if they weren't even there—and instead strode right up to Louise's bed, staring down at the child nestled in her arms. Nadine was asleep by now, drool slipping from her lips, and although she looked just like any other baby, Hargreeves looked at her like he'd never seen anything so fascinating in his life.

"Extraordinary," he murmured. Louise and Beau exchanged a look.

"Sorry, do you need something?" Beau asked, bravely taking the situation by its horns. Hargreeves looked up at him like he'd just realized he was there. Which, given the way he was treating the awed nurses and doctors—like nothing more than gum stuck to the bottom of his shoes—may have very well been so.

"How much do you want for it?" he asked, his eyes trailing back down to examine the baby. It was like he was checking an egg carton to make sure all of the eggs were intact. And it was like he was asking how much those eggs cost.

But Nadine Vidal was not a carton of eggs, she was a baby, and so Louise and Beau took the billionaire's statement with a kind of bewilderment that certainly wouldn't be present if he were just asking for the price of eggs.

"Excuse me?" Louise asked, clutching Nadine closer to her. "My... my baby is not for sale."

"Your child is going to grow up extraordinary," said Hargreeves. "She'll have abilities that are beyond the realms of science. You certainly won't want to take care of take care of such a nuisance. But I assure you, Mr. and Mrs. Vidal, I am quite capable. I can take her out of your hands, and you will be suitably compensated."

"You're crazy," Beau said, his face red and hot from the sheer audacity of this man. "We've been trying to have a child for six years, and now you want us to... just sell her to you? She's not some kind of animal. She's our daughter."

"Your daughter is a Trojan Horse, Mr. Vidal," said Hargreeves, inspecting the girl. "Something dangerous inside a neatly wrapped package."

"Get out of here," Louise wailed. The woman's eyes were already wet with tears, and as she screwed up her face, more formed in her eyes like crystals. "You have no right to come in here and demand my baby girl! We're not interested in giving her up!"

Once Hargreeves came to the conclusion that Louise and Beau Vidal were not going to give up their precious baby, he left, shaking his head disappointingly at the loss. Louise and Beau exchanged a look as they watched the man make his way out of the hospital, and then, almost in sync, looked back down to the baby girl. Extraordinary, he'd called her. Dangerous. It seemed impossible that he knew such a thing. It seemed impossible that all of that was wrapped in such a tiny package.

Little did they know, Hargreeves had been right. Nadine Vidal was indeed a Trojan Horse, and, as the saying went, you should never look a gift horse in the mouth.

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HAVEN: the way i literally rewrote this like three times and still hate it 😍🥰 i promise the writing does get better though 😌

anyway, welcome to ignis fatuus! i'm so scared to post this fic because it's so different from other umbrella academy fics, but hopefully at least someone will like it </3 the plotline was really difficult for me to deal with, and i learned that writing an oc who's not a hargreeves is really tough. i can understand why everyone's fics either features a hargreeves oc or someone who's connected to the umbrella academy 🙈

i know this prologue was short af, but i promise you, the chapters are longer! i think the shortest one so far is 2500 words, which isn't bad. the longest one is over 3000 <3

thank you for reading 🥺🥺🥺