A little about the family first. Marc Vega met Evangeline Gallardo in Rio Verde, Brazil, passing through while on assignment. That assignment brought him no end of trouble and a bullet hole or two - but it also hooked him up with his future wife and won him a Pulitzer, so he counted it as a net win. The details of that meeting and that assignment change with every retelling, contingent on the audience, but the general gist is this: that Marc did some crazy and stupid things in his previous career, and that Eva saved him at least once, perhaps from himself.
Jake takes after his father. If ever there were natural clones, those two would certainly pass for it - both green-eyed and blond-haired, both addicted to adrenaline, both charming bastards. Jake's father taught him to lie almost sooner than he taught the boy to walk, but really, the trait came naturally. In contrast, Jake's fraternal twin brother looks nothing like either of them. James Vega, whom Jake has affectionately labeled "freak", takes after his mother - and his father, and his uncles, and a hundred other ancestors. Jake's younger twin is taller, broader, and darker-skinned, with bizarrely blue eyes and black, curly hair.
They've got a younger sister, Mandy, now twelve. She's darker-skinned, with brown hair and muddy green eyes, and neither of them pay her much mind. She's the baby of the family, after all, and they're too old to really pay much attention to their little sister - both of them having just turned eighteen, officially now college boys.
Those five - plus extended family, cousins in Brazil, aunts and uncles all over South America, nieces and nephews and grandparents and the odd half-brother or three residing all over America - comprise the Vega family. It's not hard to be related to them - all one needs is a pretty woman somewhere back in the family line. All the way back to old Spain, there've been Vega men afflicted with wanderlust and wandering eyes; the family tree is broad and full of spare branches.
In any case, along came Jake. That wanderlust is in his veins as well, which might explain why he readily chose to head to New York despite the recent catastrophes, why he and his brother decided mutually to sign up to their father's alma mater, Columbia University, despite the recent tragedy on campus. "All my life," he argued to his father, "I've grown up hearing your damn stories. I want to see some stories of my own!" And, as ever, he got his wish.
Jake has never, in his life, wished for anything big. It's dangerous, see. When he was twelve and his brother almost signed up for the track team, Jake wished very hard that James wouldn't - and James broke his shin a few minutes later, racing down the sidewalk to catch a football Jake himself had thrown. He never forgave himself completely for that - there's always that niggling doubt that he actually meant for that to happen. Within a few days he built up the courage again to try that once more, but this time he wished for something a little more innocent: marshmallows for dinner. He wouldn't ask, he vowed, and wouldn't say a word to anyone. That night, his mother made sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping.
These innocuous discoveries caused him to wish for other things - some selfish and some not. That his brother would get better quickly - he bent his mind to that one for a solid month whenever he thought of it. That he'd pick the right answers on his SATs - his score went up several points. That he'd win a race… and the fastest runner on the field besides Jake himself was disqualified. He felt guilty about that one, and threw a race later to make up for it out of a demented sense of karma. For a while, wishing was a game; despite what had happened to James, he didn't really take it seriously. Then someone backed him against the wall.
His coach, despite his skill, was an asshole. He pushed the boys as far as they'd go - insults, yelling, extra work, all the abuse a person in authority could heap on their charges, Coach Heath was guilty of using against Jake and the rest of his class. No one said a word, though - the coach got results. Jake himself stayed after school hours frequently to run the track and get some practice in - plus, he and some of the other boys had a regular soccer game going. That was how he met Simon.
Simon Graves was a short, slender, reedlike kid, a year younger than Jake and white as a ghost - ice-pale blond hair, flat gray eyes, and sunless skin. He ended up under the bleachers doing homework one day, hiding from the other kids and unwilling to head home for whatever reason. The ball ended up falling through those bleachers, which lead Jake beneath them, where he discovered Simon. In a moment or two he was inviting the skinny boy to play - and backing him up on the far side of the field. They didn't lose, which was far more than Simon expected… but it was Simon who kicked the ball off the field and under the coach's feet while the man was working with another student.
The shouting was completely out of proportion to the infraction. Simon wasn't even in the coach's class, and this wasn't an official game, just a pickup soccer game. Despite all that, the coach reamed the boy up one side and down the other, loudly, in front of the older kids. Jake tried to pretend it wasn't happening, hoping Coach would be done soon - and Simon started crying. To a man like Coach Heath, that was a great big bulls eye. He dragged in a deep breath, muscles tensing, hand drawing back - and for an instant, Jake was absolutely convinced that Coach was going to hit the kid. Something inside him cracked. The wish was only one word: No! And a baseball flew out of the clear blue sky and struck the man right on the head.
They all stood around open-mouthed for a few moments, uncertain as to what to do about the suddenly not-moving man. One of the older kids, very likely the one who'd struck baseball and sent it flying, finally took charge, started saying something about 911. Jake just stood there. The truth had finally sunk home: this was his fault. He wasn't normal.
He'd joked in the past with his brother and their friends that he could make anything happen, do anything for anyone. That joking stopped. It never got mentioned again, in fact. A massive change overtook Jake from about age fifteen on - he behaved. It was as if he'd become the antithesis of his ancestors and more a twin in attitude with his brother, the "good" son. All those things he wanted to do, he suddenly realized he couldn't, lest he get caught, tested, and… well, everyone's heard the stories. Sure, they say it's for your own protection, but people vanish all the time, if you listen to the urban legends, and Jake did.
You'd think with as loving a family as he has, he would have told someone - but no. Marc Vega spoke once too often in recent years on the subject of the Evolved and the sheer damage they could do the world; it happens to be one of his favorite rants, in fact. Jake and James were repeatedly instructed to mistrust anyone with that kind of power. How long, after all, before another disaster like New York? With the evidence visible below them on the plane ride in, it was all too easy to take that advice to heart.
Thus he's careful now. Stealing, toking, drinking, all the other things he used to do, get done out of sight, with certainty that there won't be a piss test, and with a hard nudge or three to his friends to make sure they don't turn him in. His brother noted the change, but hasn't said a word yet. He thinks it's because Jake had something to do with getting Coach Heath knocked into a coma - but the guy deserved it, and surely Jake didn't do anything outright bad. He has no idea how right - and wrong - he is, nor is Jake planning to enlighten him. They've begun to grow apart, these two, secrets rising like a wall between them.
Timeline
Aug 29, 1991 - born, eldest of fraternal twins, 6 min older than James.
Sep 12, 2003 - "discovered" power - thought it was coincidence.
Sep 17, 2006 - figured out it was for real, knocked someone into a coma, kept quiet from guilt.
Nov 08, 2006 - New York explosion.
Feb 18, 2006 - Nathan Petrelli performs big reveal. Jake's dad promptly begins to rant.
Sep 01, 2009 - Jake shows up for start of schoolyear at Columbia U in New York.
…To be continued.
