Post by Hellokitty on Aug 19, 2006 8:33:03 GMT -5
Falling Book 2: Finding Marlena – Chapter 1
As the moonlight shone down upon the water, John stood by silently and watched Marlena as she stood in the surf searching out into the dark canvas before her. The ebb and flow of the tide pushed the milky white foam between her legs. Back and forth the foam rose as the tide slowly came in.
For the last month Marlena’s pattern had been the same and tonight was no different. John woke to the sound of Marlena crying out against some unseen force. Knowing that she needed physical space to get her bearings, he knelt beside her on the bed and gently and lovingly caressed her hand.
“Marlena, you’re okay….you’re safe,” he whispered to her, not loud enough for anyone else to hear, not that it mattered. Sweat forming on his brow from the humid night air, he held her hand and tried to softly coax her back into reality. Absently pulling her hand out of his grasp, she rolled over on her side, her back to him.
“Marlena, it’s okay…I’m here for you,” he tried once again to reassure her. With furrowed brow he watched as she tossed and turned in the queen sized canopied bed, grasping and pulling on the white linen sheets. Unable to stop himself, the need for physical contact too great, he slowly touched her. Fingertips tracing along the lines of her vertebrae through the thin silk of her pale blue nightgown, he willed her the calmness and serenity she so deserved.
“I love you Marlena…I’m here for you,” he told her once again. Up and down, with the gentlest of touches, he caressed her skin.
“It wasn’t me,” she whispered to some unseen force. “Not me.”
“Marlena, you’re just having a bad dream….you’re safe.”
“I told you the truth, why don’t you believe me….please.”
“Marlena, wake up honey.”
“Please, you don’t have to do that…I don’t know the number, I told you that….NO,” she screamed as she sat up in the bed gasping for air, clutching the thin sheet against her body. Wildly she looked around the room trying to figure out where she was.
“Marlena, are you alright? ” John asked her tenderly, concerned by the confused and panicked look on her pale face. She heard John’s voice but couldn’t see where the voice was coming from.
“No,” she whispered softly, chin dropping to her chest. Feeling the tears forming in her eyes and the lump in her throat, she tried to clench her eyes tightly shut to ward off her tears. She hated when this happened to her, not wanting John to see her as a weak woman all the time. John watched helplessly as she swallowed several times trying to lubricate her throat and abate the swelling. “I’m not okay John,” she finally admitted as she lifted up her head and sought solace in his strong arms.
“It’s going to be okay,” John reassured her as he held her tightly in his arms and slowly caressed her back. She snuggled further into his chest, listening to the faint beat of his heart; the only thing that she knew was real anymore.
“I wish you were right,” Marlena said as she closed her eyes and breathed in his masculine scent. “How I wish you were right.” Slowly she raised her right hand and gently played with the soft hair on his chest, needing a distraction from what she was feeling.
“Trust in us, trust in me,” John whispered as he kissed the top of her head. He so desperately wanted her to see herself the way that he did; an amazing woman so full of strength and capable of doing anything.
“I do,” she said as she pulled out of his embrace and found the inner courage to look him in the eyes. The enormity of the love, faith and trust behind his blue eyes was overwhelming, but gave her the courage to share her true feelings with him, rather than hide them as been her pattern for so many years. “John,” she tentatively said as she cupped his chin with the tips of her left fingers, “You are the only thing in this world that I can count on and trust in…I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“Well lucky for you, you’ll never have to find out because I intend to be with you forever lady. You are my one true love and you aren’t going to easily get rid of me, that I can promise…we’ll both be old, racing our walkers down the hall in a nursing home some day,” John joked, trying to bring some levity into a much too serious moment.
Marlena looked down shyly and laughed embarrassed by John’s obvious devotion to her. After everything that she had been through in her past she still didn’t believe that she was worthy of his love.
“How I wish that were true…” Marlena admitted before John interrupted her line of thought.
“So, do you want to tell me about your dream?” John asked, knowing that sooner or later Marlena was going to have to talk about her dreams and work through her issues in order to start the healing process. For the past five months in seclusion they talked about everything but the real issues. Shane’s words to him in the car on the way to the airport kept him awake at night searching his own mind for answers.
“I’ll tell you all that I know, but this information is not to be repeated to anyone…Too many lives are at stake if the Torres, Owens or Dimera families find out that Marlena Evans is really Julie Dimera…Agreed?” Shane waited till both men agreed to the terms before continuing. “John Dimera was a drug dealer, no surprise….He was just your run of the mill junkie, but not what you yanks call a player…As you already know, John Dimera and his lovely common in-law wife were not the best parents…Hit their kids, your normal abuse…The fourth grade teacher turned them into child protective services and Julie and Samantha were removed from the home…Here’s the initial report,” Shane said as he handed it to him. The fact that it was stamped OFFICIAL COPY was not lost on John. John quickly scanned the report, disgusted by some of the allegations. “They were initially placed in foster care while the parents went through court ordered parenting and anger management classes…Six months later they were returned home.”
“A couple months later they were once again removed from the home…this time because John was picked up for intent to sell…John Dimera was going by the name of John Dixon, which is why no one caught who he really was….Once the DEA found out that local PD had caught John Dimera they really started investigating. Mysteriously, Mrs. Dimera who was pregnant at the time was found floating in the family pond….DEA wanted to pop Dimera and to send a message to the Torres crime ring so they arranged for one of their operatives to be the foster parents of the girls….Enter Frank and Martha Evans, formerly known as Frank and Martha Smith.”
“Frank was to work on getting the information the FBI and DEA needed from Samantha and Marlena about their father and his associates…by this time the DEA got off their arses and figured out that he wasn’t a low level player as suspected…both girls spent almost two years with John Dimera before he was killed and they were permanently removed from the home and adopted by Frank and Martha.”
“Assuming that Marlena did this to her father,” John said as he held up the grisly photograph, “What was the connection to these people…why were they killed?”
“Unfortunately only Marlena and I’m suspecting Alex North and Mason Jones can answer that,” Shane said as he looked at his watch.
“What? How could you not have known?”
“John you have to understand that the circumstances surrounding John Dimera’s death and Channing Owens death…”
“Who were Torres and Owens,” John interrupted.
“Rafael Torres was with the Torres crime ring. They controlled all of the drug trafficking on the west coast…the family still does to this day…Same thing with Owens…His family, although masquerading as law abiding upstanding citizens controlled most of the drug trafficking on the east coast….add a Dimera to that mix and you can see why the ISA, FBI and DEA were very interested.”
“You have to understand that when Dimera was killed, the girls were immediately placed with Frank and Martha who adopted and changed their names…Some people in very high places went to great lengths to hide the girls from the Torres, Owens and Dimera families….Why is the unknown….Maybe the girls knew something? … Just pure speculation on my part as its not in the record.”
“Someone wanted everyone to think that the girls died…in the sequence of events, this occurred after the North and Jones family murders…ISA knows that Marlena wasn’t involved in those murders…The Torres, Dimera or Owens families took them out in an effort to find the girls….ISA knew that if they allowed the girls to remain “alive” they would always be in jeopardy….We worked with some informants to create the illusion of their death, spreading separate rumors that Owens and Torres murdered them….worked like a charm but inadvertently set off a crime war between the three families that continues to this day.”
“Every trace of Julie Dimera and Samantha Dimera’s existence was systematically erased…ISA gathered all original records including all the paperwork relating to their placement with the Smith family….Frank and Martha changed their last name to Evans and were relocated and given a new identity.”
“Alex North and Mason Jones were nowhere to be found….after the Owens, Dimera and Torres murders they went into hiding or were hidden, we aren’t sure…North appeared years later, connected to the Owens family…Jones appeared to be the smarter of the two and stayed hidden a little longer….for some reason both men did go to medical school and are doctors….ISA thinks that the boys weren’t taken out later because they had some leverage over all three families and that they were worth more alive than dead.”
“Fucking A,” Roman muttered. “North knew where she was all along…he had to have known,” Roman stated thinking back to Alex’s initial involvement with Marlena years before. She seemed to trust him implicitly and now he knew why. “He was her psychiatrist a long time ago Shane…maybe that’s why he came to town…she may have blocked something subconsciously relating to the murders or something else and he wanted to retrieve it.”
“John, has Marlena ever mentioned a man named El Diablo?” Shane asked.
“Not that I know of why? Who is El Diablo?”
“No way man…no way,” Roman exclaimed from the back seat. “You aren’t suggesting that El Diablo was involved in this?”
“Who the hell is El Diablo?” John asked confused by the looks that passed between Shane and Roman.
“They’re going to kill her Shane…OH MY GOD,” Roman exclaimed in shock, trying to comprehend this information. “Oh god…oh god…oh god…”
“Who the hell is El Diablo?” John yelled, interrupting Roman’s muttering.
“El Diablo is the head of the Owens crime family…one of their more elusive members….Interpol and ISA have been secretly working together for years collecting evidence of his involvement…He’s what you yanks refer to as Teflon….a lead comes in and the source is killed or the papers connecting him to the crime disappear…nothing has been able to stick. The only evidence we have of his involvement are fingerprints taken from the Dimera house by the local PD after the murders…. Naturally, the originals turned up missing days later, but unbeknownst to El Diablo, ISA had been provided with a copy of the prints…We know he was there, but why?”
“And Marlena is the only one that knows why he was there.” Roman was in shock. El Diablo’s involvement complicated the matter even more. Marlena’s statement about not wanting this to go to trial all made sense. She knew who El Diablo was and probably thought that if she quietly pled guilty she’d have the best chance for survival.
“Who is this El Diablo?” John asked.
“Your president, Maxwell Owens.”
“John, are you okay,” Marlena finally asked John, after several minutes of uncomfortable silence where he stared at her, a vacant look in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” John said somewhat embarrassed that Marlena had caught him, his mind clearly focused on something else. Several times a day his conversation with Roman and Shane played in his mind as he still tried to grasp what he had been told about his wife and her past. What did at she have on President Owens that had him aggressively using the NSA, DEA, Secret Service, Interpol and the FBI for his own purposes. He knew that Marlena had killed Channing Owens, the Presidents brother, but why such secrecy and urgency towards her capture? Why did she kill Rafael Torres and Channing Owens? And John Dimera being her father. The picture of her father that Marlena clutched to her chest the night on the pier when she tried to commit suicide still haunted him. His physical resemblance to her father had been bothering him ever since but he didn’t know how to approach the subject with her without setting her off. Sleek black hair, blue eyes, chiseled cheeks and a strong roman nose, the picture of John Dimera could have been a picture of him thirty years before.
He needed to stop thinking about her past and trying to solve the mystery himself or he was going to drive himself crazy. Shaking his head he asked her once again, “Do you want to tell me about your dream?”
“No,” Marlena whispered, looking down, tears welling up in her eyes as she recalled her dream with surprising and haunting clarity. “I want to tell you but I can’t.” She truly wanted to tell him about the dream she had been having night after night, but couldn’t. It had nothing to do with him, and a lack of trust on her part, because she truly did trust him, she didn’t trust herself or her memories.
“Marlena, you know that you can tell me anything,” John said tenderly as he lifted her trembling chin with his fingers and looked in her tear laden hazel eyes. “Anything you tell me is safe with me…It might help you to talk about it.”
“I know that John…I do and I so appreciate that about you, especially now,” Marlena whispered, not bothering to hide from him the tears that so openly spilled down her cheeks in the pale moonlight. Mesmerized by the incandescence of each drop as it slowly rolled down her cheek, John reached out and captured a drop on his thumb, amazed that it still held its shape. Putting his thumb up to his lips he tasted the saltiness of the pain that she was feeling.
“I’m afraid that if I talk about what my dream is about, that it will be true.”
“What if it is true?” John asked, his thumb still to his lips. Where the truth began in her mind wasn’t what was important anymore to him, getting her to open up and confide in him all these deeply held fears caught in the recesses of her mind was.
“Then you’ll leave,” Marlena whispered, her voice cracking. What she wouldn’t give for him to see the pictures in her mind, not having to verbally share and admit what she saw when she closed her eyes. Explaining was difficult when she herself didn’t understand what she was remembering.
“Why would I leave?” John asked as he willed himself to stay calm, even though internally his mind was racing and he was starting to panic wondering what she could have meant.
“The small piece that I remember, if its true, then we are never going home John…I’m afraid that he isn’t going to leave me alone until I’m dead.” There she said it, fear number 361 in her mind was out on the table and there was no taking it back. Marlena looked up at John tentatively waiting for his reaction, needing for him to make everything all right. Not getting the immediate reaction and reassurance from John that she so craved, as was her habit when things got too intense and she wasn’t able to deal with it, Marlena ran. Getting up off the bed she ran toward the door and down the hall, the pale blue silk of her nightgown shining ethereally as the moonlight caught it.
“Marlena,” John yelled as he followed her, knowing that she was running towards the beach and whatever was there that she seemed to find solace and comfort in.
As he stood behind her watching the foam from the tide rise higher and higher, he knew that sooner or later he was going to have to force her to confront the demons that occupied her mind at night and terrified her soul.
“Why is this happening to me?” she asked John softly, sensing him standing behind her. Images of the man in her dreams holding a knife to her jugular demanding that she tell him the number flashed through her mind. Concentrating on the feeling of the sand as it moved with the tide between her toes, she tried to stop the memory from returning.
“It might help to talk about what you are feeling Marlena,” John said as he carefully walked into the frigid surf and stood behind her, touching her shoulders lightly. “Sooner or later you’re going to have to stop running from your past, running from your fears.”
“I know that but I don’t know how to stop,” Marlena admitted as she closed her eyes and let the soft breeze from the ocean caress her face. Although a psychiatrist by trade, she was unable to explain her own complicated feelings to her ex-husband John. She was grateful that he was here with her, and didn’t know what she would have done if he weren’t. She cursed the day that she asked him for a divorce and he went through with her request.
“Baby steps, that’s all I ask…like, what are you thinking right now?” he asked as he looked up at the night sky, the full moon illuminating the stars in the sky even more. Seeing a shooting star in the sky, he closed his eyes and wished that his children back home in Salem were healthy and happy. He would give anything to see them, but knew that it was too risky.
“You really want to know,” she asked coyly as she looked over her shoulder at him. His eyes held such sadness that she wondered what he had been thinking that had put such a look on his beautiful face.
“Of course sweetheart,” John said as he massaged her shoulders. The tide was now up to his waist and it wouldn’t be much longer before it would be over his head. He hoped that Marlena would receive her solace from the sea before it got to that point. The humidity of the air along with the coldness of the water made for an interesting combination.
“All my life I’ve been told who I was, or wasn’t and who I should be…Am I Julie, the abused and unloved child or am I Marlena, the virtue of Salem…Professionally, I’m Dr. Marlena Evans, why not Dr. Marlena Black? Why didn’t I take your last name? Was my subconscious sending me a message not to for some unknown reason…Didn’t it bother you at all?” When John didn’t answer her, she continued, “I don’t know who I am anymore and I think that’s part of my problem.”
John nodded and continued rubbing her shoulders and back wanting her to continue.
“My given name may be Julie, but I don’t want to be Julie…I can’t be Julie. I refuse to define myself and live my life as a victim…Julie was a victim, I’m not…But I’m not entirely Marlena, because she’s not real…she’s an idealized version of what the perfect woman should look and act like that I created, but she’s not me…I tried to be her for so long but couldn’t…I don’t want to be perfect…I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t want to be Marlena as I was before either….Does this make sense to you?”
“Yes,” John said as he squeezed her shoulders in support. “With the return of your memory you’ve had a lot to accept, some of those things being extremely painful…It’s only natural that all of this would be confusing for you.”
“Thank you John for that….It helps that you understand and don’t think that I’m crazy.”
“Far from it,” John whispered before he placed a tender kiss on the side on her neck. Leaving his lips on her neck for longer than was necessary he breathed in her scent, thankful that she was alive and with him. Regardless of what life threw at them, they would always be stronger together than apart.
“Everything is so complicated now, yet so simple in a way,” Marlena began, trying to gather her thoughts and present them to John in a somewhat comprehensible manner. “As messed up as my life appears to have been, its okay…I can accept that bad things happened…What happened, what I did, I can’t change that, I can’t give myself a childhood that I didn’t have….It is what it is.” Marlena turned around in the surf and faced John, taking his hand in hers. All the love and support she needed were evident in his eyes. Things were going to be okay. Finding the courage in him, she continued. “All the experiences in my life up until now were created by my own thoughts and words, what I believed about myself, I became. Somewhere along the line I became someone that I didn’t recognize, someone that I don’t really like….But that’s in the past, its over and done with.”
“What are you going to do?” John asked as he reached out and took her other hand in his.
“I need to find out who I am, I need to find Marlena.”
As the moonlight shone down upon the water, John stood by silently and watched Marlena as she stood in the surf searching out into the dark canvas before her. The ebb and flow of the tide pushed the milky white foam between her legs. Back and forth the foam rose as the tide slowly came in.
For the last month Marlena’s pattern had been the same and tonight was no different. John woke to the sound of Marlena crying out against some unseen force. Knowing that she needed physical space to get her bearings, he knelt beside her on the bed and gently and lovingly caressed her hand.
“Marlena, you’re okay….you’re safe,” he whispered to her, not loud enough for anyone else to hear, not that it mattered. Sweat forming on his brow from the humid night air, he held her hand and tried to softly coax her back into reality. Absently pulling her hand out of his grasp, she rolled over on her side, her back to him.
“Marlena, it’s okay…I’m here for you,” he tried once again to reassure her. With furrowed brow he watched as she tossed and turned in the queen sized canopied bed, grasping and pulling on the white linen sheets. Unable to stop himself, the need for physical contact too great, he slowly touched her. Fingertips tracing along the lines of her vertebrae through the thin silk of her pale blue nightgown, he willed her the calmness and serenity she so deserved.
“I love you Marlena…I’m here for you,” he told her once again. Up and down, with the gentlest of touches, he caressed her skin.
“It wasn’t me,” she whispered to some unseen force. “Not me.”
“Marlena, you’re just having a bad dream….you’re safe.”
“I told you the truth, why don’t you believe me….please.”
“Marlena, wake up honey.”
“Please, you don’t have to do that…I don’t know the number, I told you that….NO,” she screamed as she sat up in the bed gasping for air, clutching the thin sheet against her body. Wildly she looked around the room trying to figure out where she was.
“Marlena, are you alright? ” John asked her tenderly, concerned by the confused and panicked look on her pale face. She heard John’s voice but couldn’t see where the voice was coming from.
“No,” she whispered softly, chin dropping to her chest. Feeling the tears forming in her eyes and the lump in her throat, she tried to clench her eyes tightly shut to ward off her tears. She hated when this happened to her, not wanting John to see her as a weak woman all the time. John watched helplessly as she swallowed several times trying to lubricate her throat and abate the swelling. “I’m not okay John,” she finally admitted as she lifted up her head and sought solace in his strong arms.
“It’s going to be okay,” John reassured her as he held her tightly in his arms and slowly caressed her back. She snuggled further into his chest, listening to the faint beat of his heart; the only thing that she knew was real anymore.
“I wish you were right,” Marlena said as she closed her eyes and breathed in his masculine scent. “How I wish you were right.” Slowly she raised her right hand and gently played with the soft hair on his chest, needing a distraction from what she was feeling.
“Trust in us, trust in me,” John whispered as he kissed the top of her head. He so desperately wanted her to see herself the way that he did; an amazing woman so full of strength and capable of doing anything.
“I do,” she said as she pulled out of his embrace and found the inner courage to look him in the eyes. The enormity of the love, faith and trust behind his blue eyes was overwhelming, but gave her the courage to share her true feelings with him, rather than hide them as been her pattern for so many years. “John,” she tentatively said as she cupped his chin with the tips of her left fingers, “You are the only thing in this world that I can count on and trust in…I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“Well lucky for you, you’ll never have to find out because I intend to be with you forever lady. You are my one true love and you aren’t going to easily get rid of me, that I can promise…we’ll both be old, racing our walkers down the hall in a nursing home some day,” John joked, trying to bring some levity into a much too serious moment.
Marlena looked down shyly and laughed embarrassed by John’s obvious devotion to her. After everything that she had been through in her past she still didn’t believe that she was worthy of his love.
“How I wish that were true…” Marlena admitted before John interrupted her line of thought.
“So, do you want to tell me about your dream?” John asked, knowing that sooner or later Marlena was going to have to talk about her dreams and work through her issues in order to start the healing process. For the past five months in seclusion they talked about everything but the real issues. Shane’s words to him in the car on the way to the airport kept him awake at night searching his own mind for answers.
“I’ll tell you all that I know, but this information is not to be repeated to anyone…Too many lives are at stake if the Torres, Owens or Dimera families find out that Marlena Evans is really Julie Dimera…Agreed?” Shane waited till both men agreed to the terms before continuing. “John Dimera was a drug dealer, no surprise….He was just your run of the mill junkie, but not what you yanks call a player…As you already know, John Dimera and his lovely common in-law wife were not the best parents…Hit their kids, your normal abuse…The fourth grade teacher turned them into child protective services and Julie and Samantha were removed from the home…Here’s the initial report,” Shane said as he handed it to him. The fact that it was stamped OFFICIAL COPY was not lost on John. John quickly scanned the report, disgusted by some of the allegations. “They were initially placed in foster care while the parents went through court ordered parenting and anger management classes…Six months later they were returned home.”
“A couple months later they were once again removed from the home…this time because John was picked up for intent to sell…John Dimera was going by the name of John Dixon, which is why no one caught who he really was….Once the DEA found out that local PD had caught John Dimera they really started investigating. Mysteriously, Mrs. Dimera who was pregnant at the time was found floating in the family pond….DEA wanted to pop Dimera and to send a message to the Torres crime ring so they arranged for one of their operatives to be the foster parents of the girls….Enter Frank and Martha Evans, formerly known as Frank and Martha Smith.”
“Frank was to work on getting the information the FBI and DEA needed from Samantha and Marlena about their father and his associates…by this time the DEA got off their arses and figured out that he wasn’t a low level player as suspected…both girls spent almost two years with John Dimera before he was killed and they were permanently removed from the home and adopted by Frank and Martha.”
“Assuming that Marlena did this to her father,” John said as he held up the grisly photograph, “What was the connection to these people…why were they killed?”
“Unfortunately only Marlena and I’m suspecting Alex North and Mason Jones can answer that,” Shane said as he looked at his watch.
“What? How could you not have known?”
“John you have to understand that the circumstances surrounding John Dimera’s death and Channing Owens death…”
“Who were Torres and Owens,” John interrupted.
“Rafael Torres was with the Torres crime ring. They controlled all of the drug trafficking on the west coast…the family still does to this day…Same thing with Owens…His family, although masquerading as law abiding upstanding citizens controlled most of the drug trafficking on the east coast….add a Dimera to that mix and you can see why the ISA, FBI and DEA were very interested.”
“You have to understand that when Dimera was killed, the girls were immediately placed with Frank and Martha who adopted and changed their names…Some people in very high places went to great lengths to hide the girls from the Torres, Owens and Dimera families….Why is the unknown….Maybe the girls knew something? … Just pure speculation on my part as its not in the record.”
“Someone wanted everyone to think that the girls died…in the sequence of events, this occurred after the North and Jones family murders…ISA knows that Marlena wasn’t involved in those murders…The Torres, Dimera or Owens families took them out in an effort to find the girls….ISA knew that if they allowed the girls to remain “alive” they would always be in jeopardy….We worked with some informants to create the illusion of their death, spreading separate rumors that Owens and Torres murdered them….worked like a charm but inadvertently set off a crime war between the three families that continues to this day.”
“Every trace of Julie Dimera and Samantha Dimera’s existence was systematically erased…ISA gathered all original records including all the paperwork relating to their placement with the Smith family….Frank and Martha changed their last name to Evans and were relocated and given a new identity.”
“Alex North and Mason Jones were nowhere to be found….after the Owens, Dimera and Torres murders they went into hiding or were hidden, we aren’t sure…North appeared years later, connected to the Owens family…Jones appeared to be the smarter of the two and stayed hidden a little longer….for some reason both men did go to medical school and are doctors….ISA thinks that the boys weren’t taken out later because they had some leverage over all three families and that they were worth more alive than dead.”
“Fucking A,” Roman muttered. “North knew where she was all along…he had to have known,” Roman stated thinking back to Alex’s initial involvement with Marlena years before. She seemed to trust him implicitly and now he knew why. “He was her psychiatrist a long time ago Shane…maybe that’s why he came to town…she may have blocked something subconsciously relating to the murders or something else and he wanted to retrieve it.”
“John, has Marlena ever mentioned a man named El Diablo?” Shane asked.
“Not that I know of why? Who is El Diablo?”
“No way man…no way,” Roman exclaimed from the back seat. “You aren’t suggesting that El Diablo was involved in this?”
“Who the hell is El Diablo?” John asked confused by the looks that passed between Shane and Roman.
“They’re going to kill her Shane…OH MY GOD,” Roman exclaimed in shock, trying to comprehend this information. “Oh god…oh god…oh god…”
“Who the hell is El Diablo?” John yelled, interrupting Roman’s muttering.
“El Diablo is the head of the Owens crime family…one of their more elusive members….Interpol and ISA have been secretly working together for years collecting evidence of his involvement…He’s what you yanks refer to as Teflon….a lead comes in and the source is killed or the papers connecting him to the crime disappear…nothing has been able to stick. The only evidence we have of his involvement are fingerprints taken from the Dimera house by the local PD after the murders…. Naturally, the originals turned up missing days later, but unbeknownst to El Diablo, ISA had been provided with a copy of the prints…We know he was there, but why?”
“And Marlena is the only one that knows why he was there.” Roman was in shock. El Diablo’s involvement complicated the matter even more. Marlena’s statement about not wanting this to go to trial all made sense. She knew who El Diablo was and probably thought that if she quietly pled guilty she’d have the best chance for survival.
“Who is this El Diablo?” John asked.
“Your president, Maxwell Owens.”
“John, are you okay,” Marlena finally asked John, after several minutes of uncomfortable silence where he stared at her, a vacant look in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” John said somewhat embarrassed that Marlena had caught him, his mind clearly focused on something else. Several times a day his conversation with Roman and Shane played in his mind as he still tried to grasp what he had been told about his wife and her past. What did at she have on President Owens that had him aggressively using the NSA, DEA, Secret Service, Interpol and the FBI for his own purposes. He knew that Marlena had killed Channing Owens, the Presidents brother, but why such secrecy and urgency towards her capture? Why did she kill Rafael Torres and Channing Owens? And John Dimera being her father. The picture of her father that Marlena clutched to her chest the night on the pier when she tried to commit suicide still haunted him. His physical resemblance to her father had been bothering him ever since but he didn’t know how to approach the subject with her without setting her off. Sleek black hair, blue eyes, chiseled cheeks and a strong roman nose, the picture of John Dimera could have been a picture of him thirty years before.
He needed to stop thinking about her past and trying to solve the mystery himself or he was going to drive himself crazy. Shaking his head he asked her once again, “Do you want to tell me about your dream?”
“No,” Marlena whispered, looking down, tears welling up in her eyes as she recalled her dream with surprising and haunting clarity. “I want to tell you but I can’t.” She truly wanted to tell him about the dream she had been having night after night, but couldn’t. It had nothing to do with him, and a lack of trust on her part, because she truly did trust him, she didn’t trust herself or her memories.
“Marlena, you know that you can tell me anything,” John said tenderly as he lifted her trembling chin with his fingers and looked in her tear laden hazel eyes. “Anything you tell me is safe with me…It might help you to talk about it.”
“I know that John…I do and I so appreciate that about you, especially now,” Marlena whispered, not bothering to hide from him the tears that so openly spilled down her cheeks in the pale moonlight. Mesmerized by the incandescence of each drop as it slowly rolled down her cheek, John reached out and captured a drop on his thumb, amazed that it still held its shape. Putting his thumb up to his lips he tasted the saltiness of the pain that she was feeling.
“I’m afraid that if I talk about what my dream is about, that it will be true.”
“What if it is true?” John asked, his thumb still to his lips. Where the truth began in her mind wasn’t what was important anymore to him, getting her to open up and confide in him all these deeply held fears caught in the recesses of her mind was.
“Then you’ll leave,” Marlena whispered, her voice cracking. What she wouldn’t give for him to see the pictures in her mind, not having to verbally share and admit what she saw when she closed her eyes. Explaining was difficult when she herself didn’t understand what she was remembering.
“Why would I leave?” John asked as he willed himself to stay calm, even though internally his mind was racing and he was starting to panic wondering what she could have meant.
“The small piece that I remember, if its true, then we are never going home John…I’m afraid that he isn’t going to leave me alone until I’m dead.” There she said it, fear number 361 in her mind was out on the table and there was no taking it back. Marlena looked up at John tentatively waiting for his reaction, needing for him to make everything all right. Not getting the immediate reaction and reassurance from John that she so craved, as was her habit when things got too intense and she wasn’t able to deal with it, Marlena ran. Getting up off the bed she ran toward the door and down the hall, the pale blue silk of her nightgown shining ethereally as the moonlight caught it.
“Marlena,” John yelled as he followed her, knowing that she was running towards the beach and whatever was there that she seemed to find solace and comfort in.
As he stood behind her watching the foam from the tide rise higher and higher, he knew that sooner or later he was going to have to force her to confront the demons that occupied her mind at night and terrified her soul.
“Why is this happening to me?” she asked John softly, sensing him standing behind her. Images of the man in her dreams holding a knife to her jugular demanding that she tell him the number flashed through her mind. Concentrating on the feeling of the sand as it moved with the tide between her toes, she tried to stop the memory from returning.
“It might help to talk about what you are feeling Marlena,” John said as he carefully walked into the frigid surf and stood behind her, touching her shoulders lightly. “Sooner or later you’re going to have to stop running from your past, running from your fears.”
“I know that but I don’t know how to stop,” Marlena admitted as she closed her eyes and let the soft breeze from the ocean caress her face. Although a psychiatrist by trade, she was unable to explain her own complicated feelings to her ex-husband John. She was grateful that he was here with her, and didn’t know what she would have done if he weren’t. She cursed the day that she asked him for a divorce and he went through with her request.
“Baby steps, that’s all I ask…like, what are you thinking right now?” he asked as he looked up at the night sky, the full moon illuminating the stars in the sky even more. Seeing a shooting star in the sky, he closed his eyes and wished that his children back home in Salem were healthy and happy. He would give anything to see them, but knew that it was too risky.
“You really want to know,” she asked coyly as she looked over her shoulder at him. His eyes held such sadness that she wondered what he had been thinking that had put such a look on his beautiful face.
“Of course sweetheart,” John said as he massaged her shoulders. The tide was now up to his waist and it wouldn’t be much longer before it would be over his head. He hoped that Marlena would receive her solace from the sea before it got to that point. The humidity of the air along with the coldness of the water made for an interesting combination.
“All my life I’ve been told who I was, or wasn’t and who I should be…Am I Julie, the abused and unloved child or am I Marlena, the virtue of Salem…Professionally, I’m Dr. Marlena Evans, why not Dr. Marlena Black? Why didn’t I take your last name? Was my subconscious sending me a message not to for some unknown reason…Didn’t it bother you at all?” When John didn’t answer her, she continued, “I don’t know who I am anymore and I think that’s part of my problem.”
John nodded and continued rubbing her shoulders and back wanting her to continue.
“My given name may be Julie, but I don’t want to be Julie…I can’t be Julie. I refuse to define myself and live my life as a victim…Julie was a victim, I’m not…But I’m not entirely Marlena, because she’s not real…she’s an idealized version of what the perfect woman should look and act like that I created, but she’s not me…I tried to be her for so long but couldn’t…I don’t want to be perfect…I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t want to be Marlena as I was before either….Does this make sense to you?”
“Yes,” John said as he squeezed her shoulders in support. “With the return of your memory you’ve had a lot to accept, some of those things being extremely painful…It’s only natural that all of this would be confusing for you.”
“Thank you John for that….It helps that you understand and don’t think that I’m crazy.”
“Far from it,” John whispered before he placed a tender kiss on the side on her neck. Leaving his lips on her neck for longer than was necessary he breathed in her scent, thankful that she was alive and with him. Regardless of what life threw at them, they would always be stronger together than apart.
“Everything is so complicated now, yet so simple in a way,” Marlena began, trying to gather her thoughts and present them to John in a somewhat comprehensible manner. “As messed up as my life appears to have been, its okay…I can accept that bad things happened…What happened, what I did, I can’t change that, I can’t give myself a childhood that I didn’t have….It is what it is.” Marlena turned around in the surf and faced John, taking his hand in hers. All the love and support she needed were evident in his eyes. Things were going to be okay. Finding the courage in him, she continued. “All the experiences in my life up until now were created by my own thoughts and words, what I believed about myself, I became. Somewhere along the line I became someone that I didn’t recognize, someone that I don’t really like….But that’s in the past, its over and done with.”
“What are you going to do?” John asked as he reached out and took her other hand in his.
“I need to find out who I am, I need to find Marlena.”