The only thing you need to know is that Jake is about 17 years old. Oh, and that Anna is Robin's daughter.
Jake Morgan despised being lied to.
His mother once told him it was a trait taken from his father, a man who honored truth and honesty above all other characteristics. They were signs of a good, strong man, and he always believed that his father held those values higher than anyone else.
Until now.
Standing in his bedroom of Penthouse 2 in Harbor View Towers, the only home he could remember, he was slowly coming to the understand that his father's morals were nothing more than a lie.
He stooped down to pick up the canvas he'd smashed upon entering the room, carefully sweeping tiny pieces of wood into his hand to avoid any possible splinters later on. Frowning at the hole in the center of the painting, he shook his head and tossed the broken canvas onto the bed, knowing it would be the first of many he destroyed in the privacy of his room.
Like always, Jake Morgan would grieve in private.
His father once told him it was a trait taken from his mother, a woman willing to do whatever it took for her children and family, even if it meant hurting herself the most in the end. Not that she ever showed it. She was as stoic and strong as his father, who like his son knew there were times she cried behind closed doors.
Raking a hand through his short, spiky blonde locks, he walked over to the window and peered out into the night. Darkness had long ago settled over Port Charles, slowly creeping through the streets and alleys, leaving him to wonder what other secrets lurked beneath the shadows.
He supposed it was his fault for growing up with such predispositions about his parents. To him, they were unlike anyone else with a love so strong and pure, that nothing could ever break it. Turning around he glanced at the canvas on his bed, realizing his parents were just like the painting he'd been attempting to perfect for weeks. Brief moments brushed together, forced into place by circumstance.
A painting was often called art, but to him it was mostly a contrived image of emotion. Desperate and often times failed attempts at expressing how he felt when he thought no one else understood. Those moments were rare for Jake, simply because he always had two parents and an older brother to fall back on. They never judged or criticized and they always understood. Though now he wondered if they were just trying to make up for the inevitable truth they believed was long ago buried.
"Jake?" came his mother's soft voice as she knocked gently on the door. "Jake, are you alright?"
Clearing his throat, he looked around at the room, his eyes sweeping over the mess he'd managed to create in the brief time he'd been home. A broken easel was dispersed in various pieces across the room, while travel books lay strewn about the plush carpet. He'd torn a photograph off the wall that was taken in Italy, fighting his desire to tear it into pieces or burn it while his parents watched.
"Jake," came his father's voice, this time rough and scratchy, as if it pained him to speak.
He wanted to hurt him as badly as they were hurting him, and he hated himself for it.
Especially considering that after another near death experience, his father was in no shape to go a round with his angry teenage son. Not to mention that his mother was still reeling from the near loss, and she had no heart left to be broken.
"Jason, wait," Elizabeth murmured nervously, as his father turned the door knob, only to swear when he realized it was locked.
"Jake!" he hissed, ignoring his wife's pleas to calm down.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, clutching the picture from Italy in his hand, as he waited patiently for the door to open.
Seconds later, be it by his father's shoulder or foot, the door swung open nearly coming off it's hinges. His room was filled with a single stream of light from the hallway that landed perfectly on him, almost fitting for his role as the prodigal son.
"Honey, what's going on?" Elizabeth asked, holding her stance in the doorway as her husband loomed behind her.
Jake didn't have to see his father's face to know it was filled with anger and confusion for the way he lashed out. Never before had he spoken back to his parents, but when he came home just thirty minutes before to find them together as if that's how it was supposed to be, he couldn't take it. He'd told them both to go straight to hell before pounding his way up the stairs to tear his room apart.
"The truth or a lie?" her youngest son asked, shifting his eyes to her's.
"I think you know the answer to that," she replied, stepping slowly into his room, knowing she was invading his space.
She knelt down carefully, picking up book after book until her tiny arms couldn't hold anymore.
"Jake," his father growled from the doorway, where he leaned against the doorway, the hall light illuminating his large, muscular figure. His body blocked the light casting a shadow on his son's face.
"Hmm?" he murmured, tipping his head in his father's direction.
"Don't get an attitude with your father," Elizabeth sighed, sliding each book back onto the shelf. When she finished, she looked back around the room and proceeded to pick up the easel, clucking her tongue. "This is completely broke."
"That was the point," he replied, doing his best not to tense under his father's stern gaze.
His eyes flashed to the doorway, seeking the familiarity of Jason's eyes, the eyes he'd given his son. He wasn't surprised when he was met with a cold stare, one that he didn't have to see to feel through the darkness. Everyone always said Jason Morgan had a look that could kill a man where he stood, and Jake was starting to believe it.
"Oh, Jake," Elizabeth murmured, standing beside him now and leaning over to pick up the torn canvas. "What is wrong?"
She wrapped her fingers tightly around the broken edges, staring down at the painting with a taut grimace. Loosening one hand, she traced it over the swirls of red and blue as tears filled her eyes.
"This was one of your best pieces," she whispered, cradling the painting to her chest as she looked down at him. "Just tell us what's wrong. Did you have another fight with Cameron? Or is this about a girl?"
"No," he replied flatly, fisting his bedspread on either side of him.
Elizabeth nodded, pushing her long, chocolate curls from her face and glancing in the direction of her husband.
"You're going to get a splinter," his father murmured from the doorway when her hands tightened around the canvas.
Her lips spread into a secretive smile, one that he felt was familiar, and he'd just never realized it. She set the canvas beside her son on the bed as her eyes swept over the rest of the room, before sitting down beside him.
"Jake," she sighed, slipping an arm around his shoulder.
He tensed under her touch and slid away, leaving nothing but a space of darkness between them. Silence filled the room and his mother was left wringing her hands beside him, while his father remained in the doorway. There was no doubt in any of their minds that something was falling apart.
"You-you lied to me," he said firmly, his voice breaking.
She stiffened beside him, smoothing her hands over the front of her dark, blue robe. "What did we lie to you about?" she asked softly, continuing to rub her hands against her robe as if somehow it would make all this disappear.
"Everything," he replied, getting up from the bed and walking back over to the window. He stared down at the crumpled picture in his hand, before letting it fall to the floor.
Jason finally entered the room behind him, and the mattress creaked loudly beneath his weight as he sat down next to Elizabeth. She leaned into her husband as he slid his arm around her, both of them waiting for their son to speak.
"Molly Lansing thought it would be nice to humiliate me tonight at Anna's birthday party," Jake said, clearing his throat as he turned back to his parents.
He could see his mother's eyes wide in the dark as she pulled herself out of her husband's arms. "What did she say to you?" she asked, crossing the room to him. "Jake, whatever she said, I promise-"
"Don't promise anything unless it's that what she said wasn't true," he replied, backing away from her when she closed in on him.
"What did she say?" Jason asked, leaning over to pick up one the discarded books that lay at the foot of the bed.
"A lot of things," he replied, clenching his jaw. "Like how I'm the product of a one night stand and how my mother didn't even know who I belonged to. Or how she lied and asked you to give up your child."
Tightening his fists, he walked over to wear Jason sat and waited patiently until his father lifted his eyes to his own. "Or what about how you forced her to be a kept woman because you didn't want to come forward as my father."
Jason tensed and clenched his fists tightly in his lap, but his wife stepped in before he could speak.
"It wasn't like that," Elizabeth murmured quietly, her voice sounding like a long, lost echo in the darkness. She stepped between them, surely to put distance between him and his father, because Jake knew he was pushing all the wrong buttons. "Things were different then, and it wasn't safe, so we did what was best for you and your brother."
"You let someone else pretend he was my father," Jake cried angrily, more so at Jason than his mother. "And you only stepped up to the job when the entire town learned the truth."
"It wasn't an easy decision," Jason said slowly, raking a hand through his hair. "Giving you up was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but my life was no place for a child. You know how dangerous-"
"It's still dangerous," he interrupted, pacing back and forth across the room. "Why else are we not allowed to leave the house with guards? It's why we never bought a house and why our cars have bulletproof windows. Cameron and I aren't stupid. We know what you do. We know what you've always done."
"That's because we never tried to hide it," Elizabeth replied, placing a gentle hand on her son's shoulder. "We only wanted to protect you, and while the choices we made at the time may not have been the best, it's what we chose to do."
"I was married, your father was in love with someone else, and it really was just one night," she continued, sliding her hand across his shoulder and stepping up beside him. "I was too afraid of the idea that you would have your father in your life without me, that he would raise you with someone else. It was selfish and cruel, and it was my fault. So, I tried to make a family with someone else, but it didn't work because I loved your father too much."
"Elizabeth," Jason murmured, shaking his head. He could see in his father's face that he was going to take the blame, just like Jason Morgan always did for everything. "Jake, I was the one who gave you up. I let someone else raise you because I didn't want my life to effect you. Do you think I want you to have bodyguards and bulletproof windows?"
"I wanted you to grow up with a normal family. You deserved a normal life, and that was the best thing I could have ever given you," his father said firmly, his eyes pleading for his son to understand. "It wasn't easy but I did it for you."
"But you still saw mom," he pointed out, rubbing his palm against his forehead. There were so many loose ends and mixed up facts that he doubted he would ever get the whole truth, let alone understand why they did this.
"I got to see you through her," Jason replied, swallowing hard. "I couldn't be with you and watch you grow up. She could tell me about you and show me pictures. It made it a little more bearable, but that didn't mean there wasn't a day where I didn't think about you. Where I didn't wonder what you were doing or how you were feeling."
"We couldn't have a family together," his mother chimed in, squeezing his shoulder. "I know it sounds selfish, but we just tried to hold onto each other."
"We never lied to you," his father continued seriously. "We gave you the best family we could, and we love you more than anyone else. Our past, the mistakes we made in the beginning, they shouldn't effect you-not now. Not when it was so long ago."
Jake shook his head, pulling away from his mother's touch. "I guess my real question," he said, walking back over to the window and stooping to pick up the photograph, "is what if the truth never came out?"
His parent's eyes snapped to his and their breaths grew heavy, the only sound in the dark room.
"The truth did come out," Jason replied, just as his son expected. His father was never one for pretend and what ifs. "So there's no point in imaging how things could be different."
"Your father's right," Elizabeth murmured, reaching out to touch him again, but he backed away. "We're together, and we have a great, loving family-"
"But if it didn't come out," Jake cut in, shaking his fist at them, "would we be this great, loving family? Or would you, me, and Cam still be playing pretend with some other man while you were sneaking off to see my real father?"
"Jake, you can't expect me to answer that," she replied, holding her hands against her mouth as she shook her head.
"Because you can't," he growled, glaring at his father. "You never had any intentions of coming forward, but then you were forced to. You would have let me grown up thinking someone else was my father."
For as long as he could remember, Jake had valued his connections to his father. Not only were they alike in appearances, but also in their quiet, intuitive ways. He grew up thinking they were one in the same, but in this moment, it was like looking into the face of a stranger.
Jason stiffened, casting his eyes to the floor without saying a word.
"I can't even look at either of you," Jake muttered, throwing his hands up as he headed for the door.
Glancing back from the doorway, he saw his mother begin to crumble, and his father moved hurriedly to take her in his arms. His heart sank in his chest, and he almost felt guilty for the pain he was causing them, but instead he pulled the door closed behind him, leaving them in the dark.