The beauty of fireworks danced among the cerulean sky, colors etched across the horizon. The summer air was warm yet a slight breeze seemed to covet the earth every few minutes, bringing with it the smell of freshly planted roses, a few balconies down.
Marlena Evans-Black sat outside, her gaze fixed on the site above her. The exquisiteness of it all sent shivers down her spine, as she wrapped her chenille blanket a little tighter around her lean body.
She had been alone that night, like most nights before it. Her husband was off somewhere, trying to save the world, like he so often did. Trying to rid the world of any harm that could somehow threaten his family. She loved him for it, she did. She envied the way he would stop at nothing to protect his family from harms way. But she had asked him, pleaded with him to stop … to let it go and to focus on her and their children. He couldn’t though … she knew that now. John Black was never one to give up, especially when it came to the lives of the people he loved.
After pulling her hair up in a messy ponytail, Marlena lifted her knees to her chest, her chin resting comfortably upon them. How she longed to be with John right now. To feel his hand intertwined with her own, to feel his lips against her neck. But she knew he wouldn’t come, not until long after the fireworks had ceased and her body had found its resting place for the night.
Leaning back against the lawnchair, she closed her eyes, relishing in the feel of the winds against her face. Her mind wandered to John then. Whenever she closed her eyes, it was he she saw. His warm azure eyes, his smile which looked like a young child’s whenever he was excited.
A touch upon her soft skin interrupted her thoughts and she turned around, surprised to see her husband behind her. The fireworks had ceased moments before and although trying to hide it, she couldn’t help but be annoyed with him. Looking up at him, her eyes burned into his own, causing John to shift uncomfortably on his feet.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, “I know I promised you I would be home for the fireworks but we had this lead on Tony and I …”
Marlena held up her hand, standing up. Her hazel eyes were contradicting … soft with emotion, yet harsh with anger. “I don’t care,” she said evenly, “I don’t want an excuse because that is all I have gotten these past few weeks. I asked you to give it up. I asked you to let Roman handle this. John, I am not someone who needs protection. Do you even remember all I have done with you?” she asked, her voice deafening.
He stared at her and couldn’t help but smile slightly. She was beautiful when she got angry. The way her eyes would play off her emotions perfectly, the way her lips would curve with every shrill word she said. Biting on his lower lip in hopes to keep from angering her further, John allowed her to continue.
“I went out into the wilderness with you. You were a stranger and yet I was there, wasn’t I? Do you remember that despite the fact I believed you to be Stefano, I still stayed with you? I seem to recall outliving the devil, so what makes you think I am all of a sudden a fragile piece of art that will break in an instant? I’m not glass, John, stop treating me like I am!”
John smiled at her, this time freely. Bringing his hand up to her face, he gently caressed her cheek. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry.”
Exasperated, Marlena pulled away from him, obviously unamused. “John, I am being serious.”
She paused for a moment and then sat down upon the chair once more. She looked up at him and despite her best efforts couldn’t help but revel at his face in the moonlight. The pale shimmer reflected off of his face, his rugged features quite clear. But what caught her eye the most was the scar above his right eye.
Whenever he would fall asleep before her, she would kiss it before she would slip into her world of dreams. It was what made him real … what proved he wasn’t some superhero. Although he tried to do so, John Black was not Superman. He wasn’t superhuman and that was what scared her the most. The possibility of him losing against the DiMera’s … the possibility of him never returning home.
Snapping back into reality, she realized John had sat down next to her, his hand warm against the bare skin of her back. She wanted to push him away, wanted him to know how truly angry she was, but she couldn’t. His touch was a comfort. It was the one thing that could bring her back to life when she felt dead inside.
“You’re not inhuman, John,” she continued, softly. “You go out and think that nothing will happen to you. You leave here promising me that you will return home. You can’t promise me that, John. You can’t know what will happen. If you must do this then I understand, but if you continue with this, I’m helping you.”
“No!” John replied, firmly. “You have nothing to do with this, Marlena.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked bewildered. “Of course I do. I know why you are doing this John. I know you feel this urgent need to protect me and the children, but I don’t want you to protect me. I want to help you. I love you and I want to be with you while you do this, please,” she whispered.
His heart ached as he looked at her, his hand caressing the base of her chin. His eyes soft and with his heart on his sleeve, he kissed her gently before answering her. “I don’t deserve you,” he said simply.
She smiled at him, running her fingers through his thick mane. “Stop it. Of course you do …”
“No, I don’t,” he interrupted her. “I don’t know why I behave the way I do sometimes. I don’t know why I tend to act stubborn and pig headed, like I know everything there is to know. I don’t know everything, Marlena. I barely know anything. All I know is that I love you and our children. Belle, Brady, Sami, Eric, Carrie … they might not all be mine biologically or yours biologically but with each one of them, we raised them together. I didn’t even know anything until you came into my life, Doc. And I feel that if I don’t protect you, if I don’t fight to bring down the DiMera’s, then I will fail you and our family. I can’t fail you, Marlena. Not ever again.”
His voice raw with pure sentiment, Marlena couldn’t help but be overwhelmed. Drops of moisture began to form in the corners of her eyes, allowing them to travel down her cheeks. Bringing her hand to touch the soft skin of his face, she lightly dragged her finger along his skin. “John, you have never failed me,” she whispered.
Nodding his head sadly, he allowed himself to fall into the depths of her sweet touch.
“Yes I have. I got home last night and you were already asleep. I could not sleep, so I went out. I stood on the pier for hours, gazing out into the water, looking far beyond the horizon trying to find some answers to questions that continued to run through my mind. And I realized that every answer to any question I ever had was you.”
He stopped for a moment, his eyes burning deeply within her own. Every time he looked at her, every time he gazed deeply past her eyes and into her soul, his insides turned to jelly. Even after almost two decades, she still knew how to weaken him. He didn’t know whether it was her infectious laugh or her beautiful smile or her voice that sounded more like an angel’s than a person … but whatever it was, he found himself falling more and more in love with her each passing day.
“But with every realization, came a reality,” he continued. “I began to think of all the times I promised you I’d never let you go. All the times I promised to protect you but something got in the way, usually my own ego. I told you I would never love anyone as much as I loved you and although I kept that promise, I led you to believe otherwise.”
Closing his eyes for a moment, he allowed his feelings to wash over him, leaving him lightheaded. With his eyes still shut, he found her hand, grabbing it tightly in his own, holding on for dear life. “I didn’t come look for you,” he whispered, his voice captured with pain. “When your plane went down, I tried for so long to believe you were alive. My heart was still beating and it led me to think that you were still here for with you dead, surely I must be as well. But I knew you weren’t, that you couldn’t be. I watched the plane fall, I watched your death. And so I gave up. I never looked, I never searched hard enough. I didn’t follow my heart and because of that, I left you with Orpheus for four years. Do you know how many nights I spent crying after your return? It was the first time, I realized I had failed you.”
Knowing she should stop him, Marlena couldn’t help but want him to continue. She hadn’t heard him speak like this in so long. He had somehow learned to hide his emotions, even from her, and for once in what seemed like eons, she saw her husband.
Through all the facades and all the strength, he was still only a child inside, longing to be loved and held like everyone else. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she settled her lips upon his neck, urging him to continue with a tight squeeze.
“When you came back, I was with Isabella. I had tried for so long to move on with my life after you. For my sake, but mostly for the children’s sakes. I didn’t want Carrie and the twins to live without a mother and so I proposed. I loved Isabella. I loved her as much as I could, yet there was a part of me that could never love her fully. Never to the extent that I loved you. When Isabella died, I felt as if everything I had known had suddenly vanished. You were now with Roman and I was left to raise a baby without his mother … but despite it all, you never let me down. You helped me climb out of the dark abyss I was in and led me to light. I know you regret our affair, Marlena. I know you regret the pain we caused but …”
“I don’t regret anything in my life, John,” she interrupted, pulling away from the embrace she still held him in. “Yes, maybe at the time, I regretted it. My family hated me, my husband was about to leave me, and no matter what I did it seemed as if the world was going to crash upon me. But it all worked out, didn’t it? The children have forgiven us, Roman and I are still close friends, but most of all, it brought me Belle. Whenever I look at her, I feel as if I am flying. Her energy brings me to life and her smiles remind me that even though she is growing up, she will always need her mother. She is every dream and every wish I have ever prayed for and it is because of you that those dreams have come true.”
“Like mother, like daughter,” he responded, tenderly brushing a few russet strands away from her face, “because that is how I feel about you.”
She smiled at him affectionately, allowing his fingers to graze her forehead. “John, for all those times you think you have failed me, did you ever stop think about all the times you have saved me?” Looking deeply into his eyes, she held his hand tightly, their fingers locked. “All those times you rescued me from Stefano. No matter where he had taken me, you would always find me somehow. You never gave up, you never stopped until you found me, until I was safe in your arms. We might not have been together, but our bond was something that would never dare to be broken. Do you remember how you saved me from Satan? I … I tried to destroy you and everyone else in this town, but you never gave up. You fought the devil himself in order to win back my soul. No matter who you were with, no matter what was going on in your life, you always made me your first priority. You always loved me, John Black, and to me, that is more powerful than anything else. Even more powerful than mistakes,” she said delicately.
“I am so grateful for you,” he sighed, “I hope you know that. That you know how much I love you, even when I don’t always show it or say it.”
“Of course I know,” she whispered, “I have always known. We all mess up in our lives, John. I forgave you long ago for any mistakes. When we got married again in Vegas, I promised you I would love you for always. I’m not going anywhere, John. And neither are you, not alone …”
John was about to protest when they heard the boom of fireworks just above them.
Confused, Marlena looked down at her watch and then up at John. “It’s almost one in the morning. They don’t usually set them off after eleven.”
“Except when husbands realize that they made a promise to their wife and then broke it.”
She smiled widely, kissing his lips gently. “Thank you. I love you.”
Whisking his finger along her cheekbone, he smiled back at her. “I love you too.”
John sat back against the lawn chair, pulling Marlena in front of him. His arms wrapped around her waist, they sat and watched the fireworks, both savoring their time with each other. The world before them was silent, aside from the colorful lights that struck the sky ever few moments and the feel and murmur of the summer winds left them both content and happy.
It was only after moments of silence, that John realized his wife had fallen asleep. Running his fingers through her hair for a moment, he lifted her carefully in his arms, making sure as not to wake her. Placing her among the silk kissed sheets, he couldn’t help but stare at her for a minute. Her hair blew softly through the still open terrace doors and he watched as her chest rose steadily. She finally looked at peace after restless nights and he could not help but smile.
Leaning down and kissing her lips tenderly, he stood up once more, glancing around the room for what he was looking for. Taking a pad off of Marlena’s nightstand and a pen from her desk drawer, he moved outside once more. Gazing up into the sky for a moment, he began to write, emptying everything that lived within his soul.
**
Marlena awoke, the sun beaming through the balcony doors. Incoherent for only a moment, she glanced to her side, noticing that John was still fast asleep. Smiling to herself, she ran her fingers along his face gently. It was then that she remembered something … something that seemed almost as if it were a dream. Racking her brain for the lost detail, it was then that she remembered. John’s voice whispering to her in the night … telling her to look under her pillow when she woke up. Confused, she lifted her satin pillow gently to find a piece of paper, folded nearly.
Curious, she opened it up and began to read John’s words aloud, falling deeply into his soul with each word.
My dearest Marlena,
Have you ever looked up at the stars for hours on end, wondering how it is you got to where you are? I have spent the last few months doing exactly that. You would fall asleep, your body against mine, your heart beating against my chest, and I would stare out into the world before us. A world so unpredictable, a world unknown to us all. But there is one thing I do know. In all this craziness the world has put upon us, in all the times we have been separated, it is you who I always come back to. It is you who I awaken for and it is you I dream of when my eyes close at night.
I know I don’t always treat you the way you should be treated. I know that there are times when I am not the husband you want, or the husband you deserve. But for all those times, for all the moments you want nothing more than to leave me, please remember how much I love you and adore you.
They always tell you that the first person who you fall in love with, will be someone you will never forget. For a long time, I tried to find out about my past. I wanted to know who I was and what I did and looking back on it now, I realize that it was pointless. Not because I never found out about most of my missing years, but because I didn’t care. My life began with you, Doc. It began the first time you spoke to me, the first time your lips tenderly kissed mine. The first time we made love. Even if you thought I was Roman, I know it was not the name you fell in love with again. It was me. John Black, the man who knew nothing. All I ever knew was how much I loved you. Maybe it was the memories Stefano had planted inside of my mind. Maybe they told me to love you, but none of that matters now. Because I fell for you. In my own terms and in my own mind. It was not some forced memory or anything like that. It was just you, plain and simple. I fell in love with everything about you. The way you will sit in front of the mirror for hours trying to make yourself look perfect, even though I always thought you were. I fall in love with you every time I watch you with the children, especially Belle. Marlena, I fall in love with you every day of every year. Just when I think I can’t love you anymore, I find myself staring at you, lost in everything you are and I can’t help but smile. Because I know I have been blessed. Have I ever thanked you for that, Marlena? Have I ever told you just how much everything you have given me means to me?
I am who I am because of you, Doc. I have lived my life without you. And a part of me was always missing, always lost. You are my true north. You are the angel my heart would always search for. As I told you earlier tonight, I have loved other women. But never the way I loved you. No one knew my heart in the way you did and no one touched me more with their words. You inspire me, Marlena. With every breath you take, with every smile you give, it takes me to a place in which I have never imagined.
I know I might be repeating myself from what was said tonight, but I am so overwhelmed by you and your presence that I felt the need to remind myself … and you again of how much I love you.
I love you more than I ever thought possible and each day my love for you only grows stronger. You are my center, my star. You are my wife, my lover, but most of all, Doc, you are my best friend. Forever and always.
Love,
John
Allowing the tears to fall down her flawless skin, Marlena glanced over at her husband, biting down on her lower lip. The water streams filed down her face and dropped gently into her mouth. Bringing her hand to John’s face, she tenderly caressed his skin.
For only a moment, she stayed silent, allowing herself to feel his every feature. She spoke then, her voice soft with emotion and booming with love. “For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed but my soul. I love you John Black, always have and I always always will …”
The Jarlena Journal 