The Ones Who Lived

This is the role-play in which Jack and Vanessa's stories were continued as if they lived, with impossibly good luck... until it's not.

Setting
Around 1876 at the start; London, England

Characters
Jack Mills

Vanessa Moore

Wright

Alexander

Helena(?)

Baby Girl I can't remember the name of

Stillborn child

The Story
Basically, Jack and Vanessa start out homeless on the streets of London, starving and sheltering in random cellars they could get too.

Vanessa finds herself pregnant, because neither of them have had any sex ed, and they're both horrified once they become suspicious of it, because Jack himself was raised on the streets, and it was horrifying, while Vanessa has experienced it herself and can safely assume that it's even worse than whatever she imagines it to be. Besides, neither of them have even been around children before. They're both only children, somehow.

Jack is panicking, because Vanessa is the only one he truly cares about, and he's terrified that she or the child are going to die. If Vanessa dies, then they both die and Jack is alone again. What would Jack have to live for if the only one he cared about left him because she couldn't get enough food to sustain herself?

So Jack gives Vanessa almost all of whatever he can steal or scavenge, and pledges that he'll find some way to get a better job than a simple chimney sweeper so Vanessa doesn't have to worry about anything.

So, the two of them find shelter in an abandoned building where the street rats gather, lucky enough to steal one of the better rooms for themselves before someone else. There's something significant about this room, but Shadow can't remember what.

Jack steals some clothes from this room, which are piled up on the floor nd are being used as beds by other homeless people. He finds something that somewhat fits his scrawny, malnourished self, and goes out to try and get a job while he looks less disgusting than usual. Good thing there's a river nearby to bathe in so he isn't just covered in soot.

He finds himself in Wright's bakery, feeling uncomfortable walking in so casually without trying to stay out of sight. Normally, he would just go in to steal, or sometimes buy something special if he ever got enough money to do so.

Jack reminds Wright of the man's dead son, in a way, and it's surprisingly easy for him to get hired, much to his and Vanessa's excitement. He goes to tell her, and they're both insanely happy. Vanessa is very proud of her little Jackie.

Jack and Vanessa- but mostly just Jack now that Vanessa is feeding two- keep stealing food and living as street rats. They try to stay where it's relatively clean to keep from ruining the clothes, and try to get back to the abandoned building before someone else for that very reason, though they're often chased out even when they do get there first.

After a while, Jack goes after a rich woman, aiming to steal her diamond earrings or something else, growing more desperate as the months go by to uphold his promise to Vanessa about finding them a home. In doing so, he gets his eye slashed by the woman or her husband in self-defense, and is left screaming in agony on the sidewalk, not far from where Vanessa was sheltering. They didn't have the abandoned house that day.

She came out, panicked and worried, and rushed over, holding onto Jack and trying to comfort him as he sobbed into her shoulder. She could see how hard he was trying, and she saw how bad it was, but she also knew that they really couldn't survive as they were with a child unless they got something like that. She felt horrible, but they had a meaningful conversation- one of many.

Jack got his eye covered in a makeshift bandage, and dreaded going to work the next day and having to explain himself, but he did. Wright was the one who put the pieces together on his own and asked Jack if he was homeless. Jack, of course, lied and said that he wasn't, but Wright surprised him by saying that he didn't care.

Wright's own son had been pretty much homeless due to drug addiction, and his daughter had died early on from cystic fibrosis (though there probably wasn't a diagnosis for it at the tie). He was alone, but he knew what it was like to poor, and he saw how badly the homeless and criminals had it. He'd seen the damage plenty of times for himself, and he always felt bad.

So, he invited Jack and Vanessa with open arms, and even told them that they could have his home and bakery when he died, which wouldn't be too long.

Vanessa supported Jack so much, and was so, so happy and proud of him.

A few months later, with Jack learning how to run a bakery, and with him and Vanessa having more food, Wright died, leaving both of them grieving. They took over, though, and got to explore the house, which still had some baby items stored away in a closet or room.

Jack and Vanessa set up a crib and some other stuff, taking Wright's old bedroom fo themselves. Jack found it really hard to adjust, living on the streets his entire life. He slept on the floor at first until Vanessa convinced him to try the bed for a few weeks, at least. She was the reason he coped. It should have been nothing but a good thing, of course, but it was really weird getting into a schedule, remembering everything, and doing something so... domestic. He wasn't a bread maker, he was a burglar, and he always had been.

But Vanessa helped him through it, and they eventually got into a routine, and Jack adjusted to his new life and new place.

A couple months later or so, Vanessa gave birth to twins (rare and unlikely she'd survive, but screw logic): a boy named Alexander and a girl named Helena(?). Jack almost passed out in panic, especially when one was out but Vanessa kept acting like she was dying, convincing himself that she really was dying.

But eventually it was over, Jack having absolutely no idea what to make of the situation. He'd known it was coming of course, but it was almost surreal to actually have a child, especially two.

The next four or so years were stressful, with Jack and Vanessa figuring out how to be parents, learning how to run a bakery at the same time, and honestly still adjusting to civilian life.

Their kids were inseparable, hyper and troublemaking. Both of them learned to take care of the bakery, and they had two amazing and supportive parents for everything they did.

Lif went on, and the parents couldn't be happier. The children couldn't be more privileged (in their eyes). They had it perfect.

Then Jack slowly started acting off. He would be playing with the two oldest kids, and he'd be winded faster. At first, he just thought it was because he'd been holed up in the bakery for so long, rather than being out on the streets running away from the butcher or the chihuahua on 8th Street, but the kids knew something was up. Maybe they just had a really good sixth sense, or maybe they subconsciously noticed the barely-audible whistling in his chest. Maybe it was just because neither of their parents ever tired out so fast.

Jack and Vanessa had another child, probably when the twins were about eight or so, finally learning to be more responsible. This one was a girl, spoiled and a screaming brat who her siblings and parents kind of hated. In a love-hate sort of way, that is. She was a headache. Again, Jack almost passed out at her birth while Vanessa was trying to calm him down, very annoyed by his stupidity.

Jack's breathing only got worse. It had been bad for a while, but the changes were barely noticeable at first.

Months later, Vanessa was pregnant again. Birth control didn't exist yet, and this was Victorian England, after all. It would be weird if she didn't. During and a bit before her third pregnancy was when Jack's health really got worse. Vanessa's own breathing had always been bad- she always had random attacks where it would be hard to breathe- and she had noticed that Jack had always been about the same. But it was about now when it became obvious that it wasn't just asthma. It was something else.

In the next months, Jack got worse and worse, to the point where the twins had to run the bakery already while Vanessa took care of the younger sister. That was only in the last month or two, however. until that point, he was still trying to act like everything was fine- he was raised on the streets, after all: show weakness and you're a dead man.

In his second-to-last month, he was always winded, his breath rattling in his chest, constantly coughing. He never looked well. In his last month, he was pretty much bedridden, unable to walk around without gasping for air.

It was a month before their last child was born that Vanessa woke up next to his cold body, his head buried in her shoulders and arms wrapped too-tight around her. It was a month before the last child was born that her children woke up to her sobs. It was a month before her last child was born that her children saw their mother openly cry for the first time.

It was a month, and their last child was born, dead, with his father's nose and downy brown hair.

It was five months, and Helena slowed while running to catch her breath a little earlier than usual while playing with her brother, rolling her eyes when he automatically jumped to the conclusion that she was dying. Of course she wasn't. He was like twenty-five when he'd gotten winded so early. Their mother got winded all the time, even before their father did, when playing, but she was okay.

She shrugged off his concern and they continued their game.

Helena didn't have as much time as her father had, her health deteriorating quicker, symptoms showing differently. She was bed-ridden only months later, her skin yellow and stomach bloated, and she soon died as well. Like her father, she died of a rare genetic condition which had not yet been discovered called AATD or A1AD.

Her family was a mess. Her mother was terrified of losing her sister or her brother as well, paranoid whenever her sister wasn't crying in fear that the child couldn't breathe or had been suddenly killed by something else.

Vanessa helped her son with the bakery, as she always did, but helped much less than before Jack's death. Not only busy with her youngest surviving child, but also emotionally unstable. She and Jack hd met when they were about eleven or twelve. Jack's mother had died when he was nine, his father out of the picture, and her own parents had been abusive, so they only ever had each other. Jack saved her from her own family, even if he couldn't come close to understanding her situation, and they'd been through everything together since then. Almost all of it was bad, but she only ever remembered the good parts with him. His humor, his smile, his eyes... She even remembered the moment they first saw each other. They'd saved each other countless times, pulling each other through thick and thin. And somehow, through it all, they'd survived, they'd done the impossible, and they made a family together.

But now her pillar was gone. The only friend she'd had in her entire life before Wright and her children. Wright was gone, but she hadn't known him long anyway. People died, that's just how things were. But then it was Jack, and she'd never been the same since then, but of course Helena and her unborn son had to follow him. And now Alex was acting weird. The only one who wasn't was her year-old daughter, but who was to say that he wouldn't become sick too?

Everything was falling apart. Everything that held her stable was crumbling. Alex wasn't okay either, and she couldn't protect him. He was suffering too, and she knew it. She wasn't enough.

Sometimes she wondered if it would be easier to just give up... but she couldn't. Her kids need her, and she had to be there for them. it would be selfish to go now.

And ever since Helena's death, Alex was seeing her ghost. She joined him in the bakery, talking to him like she was alive, and it was driving him mad. She wasn't real, but as much as he told her that, she insisted that she was, and everyone looked at him like he was mad, and he couldn't take it. Couldn't she just leave him alone!? She was dead, and she had to understand, but she wouldn't listen! And now her dumb ass was worrying their mom, because to her it just looked like Alex was talking to himself. How could she just stand there and act ike nothing happened? She was stupid, just like their father. He hated it. he hated her. He just wanted her to go away--

And he told her this. They got in an argument, in the middle of the bakery, and the last expression he saw on her face was one of anger and heartbreak.

God save him, he's losing his mind.

Trivia

 * This was likely one of the first "major" RPs between only a couple of us: Shadow and Sutcliff.