Adopted by Phan

Chapter 117- Alt. Ending 2 Part 3

5 Years Later.

Jay's P.O.V.

I'm 20 now. So much has changed in that time, yet so little had too. I still lived with Dan and Phil, my bedroom hadn't changed the slightest from when I was 15 with clothes strewn around the floor and my laptop open on my bed. The window was open with the sun streaming in and as I stood in the doorway looking around at the boxes, I smiled.

I was moving out, after almost a year of planning and looking around different houses, Anais and I were moving into our own house (barely 10 minutes down the road from Dan and Phil mind you). Carmen and Alexa were going to live with us temporarily until they could get their house for Uni sorted.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and I smiled, leaning back into Dan's shoulder. Somehow, by some miracle, I had grown a little, reaching 5 foot 4, almost 3 inches taller than my height at 15. I wasn't 100% sure what caused it, maybe the lack of stress in the later years, good nutrition or maybe just genes but it was nice to stand tall for once in my life.

The height gain made me almost equal in height to Anais, who was still my girlfriend after over 5 years now. It was nice having someone there to always support me, even through the nightmares and bad days, the flashbacks and panic attacks but she stood by me through everything and held me up when I needed it the most.

On the worst days, when I couldn't even move out of bed without either collapsing with exhaustion or bursting into tears, Dan and Phil came over with Phoenix for the day or they picked me up and took me home. At 20 I knew I shouldn't have been relying on them so much but those were the days I couldn't help it and I had an excuse too.

It got better, it really did. There were times when I could go through entire days without thinking of what had happened once and I worked like a normal human being and I felt amazing. There were days I could function but then there were days I couldn't and I knew those days would be around for a long time to come.

Now, 5 years on, they were few and far between but they were there.

Phoenix, my little baby, wasn't so much of a baby anymore. He was 5 years old and I loved him to pieces, even though I wasn't raising him as my own, but Dan and Phil gave him all the love that I couldn't when I wasn't there, making up for what I couldn't do.

He had grown into an almost completely likeness of me and many people thought us to be the same person in terms of personality. Headstrong, willing to do anything to get our way, emotionally strong (most of the time) and strong willed. He was pretty much a mini-me in most ways, with wiry blonde hair and sea-foam green eyes (Dan's description, not mine).

He never saw me his mother, which upset me sometimes, but rather as a sister and friend, someone to look up to as they moved through life. I wasn't sure if he even realised that I was his biological mother and I failed to mention it to him, knowing it would destroy the world around him.

I was still trying to stand strong, after barely scraping through school with half-decent grades, which was quite good considering my level of education beforehand, but it wasn't enough to get into a lot of courses in Uni and I was stuck for the time being until I passed some more classes.

Because of my situation I was given the chance to go back and do some A levels again in the hope for higher grades and I jumped at the chance, knowing it could be a lifesaver.

And hell did it work.

After 2 years of going back over most of my exams I passed with most A's and B's, a huge improvement from the C's and minimal B's a few years earlier. The only class I had passed with an A originally was art, having dropped history and dance after two years.

Soon after that, we, as in Anais and I, started looking at Uni's together. She had hung back, working full time, while I was still in school and then for the exams because of the plan we had together.

Although nothing was yet official, it would happen eventually once we had moved into our own house.

There was no plan for the future, we were living for the day in front of us. I liked living that way, no plans, no expectations, just the thought of where the day would take us and for the first time in my life, proper freedom.

As a child I never really knew what I was missing out on but now that I did I hated my parents even more. They had taken so much from me that I never knew I had and because I never knew what I was missing I had never questioned it. I cursed my ignorance.

But it was in the past, and my future was looking bright.

My little boy was in a good place, I had a real family for the first time and, what I was most glad for, I was in a good place, a place where I could finally live my life without fear.

And yes, there were still bad days. They would never go away completely and I knew that but I was okay with it, I was okay with being a human being for once in my life and that was how human beings responded to trauma.

Looking back on that fateful day when I had first run out of the alleyway where I had been sleeping and onto the bustling city streets, I knew that it was better now. I could see that, clearly, and I was grateful.

And for once in my life, I could finally say that, yes, I was happy and yes, they can promise that it would stay that way. They really can.