Alive is what they named me,

Vivienne

Alive is not gentle. It is teeth bared against betrayal, breath taken in spite of it.

The
Beginning

Alive is what I became, not because they spared me, but because I refused to spare myself.

Vivienne Laurent grew up in a house where the silverware always matched and the floors gleamed like glass. Her mother made sure of that — and of everything else. She was the only granddaughter, the family’s little rose, dressed in pressed linen and taught to keep her chin high. Summers were for Europe. Winters for Jakarta galas. There were drivers, private schools, and nights when the family dressed up to sit in a velvet opera box, her father’s cologne on one side, her mother’s perfume on the other.For a while, she thought this was what happiness looked like.Then came the empty dinners. The phone calls behind closed doors. The fights her mother tried to hide but couldn’t, not really. By the time Vivienne was fifteen, the truth wasn’t whispered anymore — her father had another woman. Another child. And he wasn’t sorry.

The Laurent dining table turned into a war zone. Her father with his casual remarks, her mother’s voice like steel as she cut him down. Vivienne learned to fight with sarcasm, a little too sharp for her own good. And when that didn’t work, she learned to run. Parties, late-night drives, road trips to nowhere — anywhere but home, anywhere she didn’t have to be Vivienne Laurent.She didn’t know then that her mother was holding everything together for her sake — refusing to divorce, paying the mistress to keep the scandal quiet. She thought her mother was staying because she was too proud to leave, too stubborn to admit defeat.Maybe that’s why Vivienne learned to run instead — into nights that blurred, into places where no one whispered her name.

Dis-claimer

Before reading.The story and character of Vivienne Laurent are purely fictional works written by ROIS. Any resemblance to real names, characters, places, or events is purely coincidental.

"I am the keeper of my own fire, carrying it through the dark that tried to put me out."

My name is Vivienne. Alive is what they named me, though for years I couldn’t feel it in my skin. Alive in a family that mistook silence for strength. Alive in the cracks of every lie that kept us standing.Maybe that’s all I am—a girl who kept breathing in a house that wanted me to hold my breath. Alive. That’s it. That’s the whole story they never thought I’d tell.

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