A History They Can’t Know – By Cordelia50

Note: this fic was written and is set before John’s aneurysm in the summer of 2020.

“The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.”
― Harry S. Truman

“I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do—the only thing—is run.”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium
______________________________

Her key turned in the townhouse door, and Marlena, removing her mask, sighed with relief at being home after a long stress-filled day at the hospital. COVID-19 kept most people away from work, but physicians, even psychiatrists, were “essential” and very busy as everyone tried to deal with major changes in their lives.

Her husband, on the phone, turned toward her and smiled in welcome as he kept speaking to the caller, “Can you email me copies? Thanks. I’ve got to go now. Appreciate it. Really.” Disconnecting, he placed his cell phone face down on the table and said, “Hi, honey. How was it today?”

“Not bad in the hospital right now, but we’re getting some new reports of infections in several nursing homes.” She shook her head worriedly as she started for the guest bathroom. She did not have to explain her routine of taking a thorough shower and using rubbing alcohol as well as soap to do her best to kill any virus that might be hanging around. Seeing firsthand those who were ill and their families, she was more aware than most that it was vital to do everything possible to keep from spreading contagion.

“Take your time, Doc. We’ll eat when you’re ready.”

***

As they finished the home-cooked spaghetti and glasses of wine with a bouquet that outshined its taste, Marlena asked John about his day. He smiled wryly, “Being home all day, sweetheart, I have nothing major to report. But I did call a slew of family members to check in.”

“Oh, I wish I’d been here for that. Everybody okay?

“Yup. Thank God.”

“Who were you talking to when I came in? Did you want them to email photos? Of grandkids maybe?” She looked at John with eager hopefulness.

Wiping tomato sauce off his own face and then off the corners of her mouth, John suddenly seemed self-conscious. “Uh. No. That wasn’t a family call.”

“Oh?” Marlena was confused, “I thought BlackPatch wasn’t taking cases right now.”

“We’re not.” He said a bit shortly.

Marlena reached over and touched John’s hand. “What am I missing, honey?”

He hesitated. Then, “You remember Jim Hankins? I’ve mentioned him once or twice.”

“Vaguely. But I can’t place him.”

“He works for Shane.” John braced himself for her reaction to that.

“Oh.” Marlena felt herself grow cold. “John! You haven’t taken another ISA case, have you?”

“No.” John shook his head firmly. “Don’t worry. It’s not that.”

Letting out her breath in a rush, Marlena replied, “Whew. You scared me, John.”

“Sorry. Sorry.” He put his arm around her shoulders and brought her close to him.

She was still on the trail though, “What then?”

“Marlena, I promise I’ll tell you all about it once I get the information he is going to email me, okay? Until then let me fill you in on the family…”

And with that, he launched into the various bits of news about kids and parents stuck at home together.

***

Marlena awoke in the dead of night and quickly detected she was all alone in their bed. Checking the time, she blearily read 3:07 am. She pushed back the light summer coverlet and donned her silky robe and matching slippers to go searching for her husband. She found him downstairs on the living room sofa with his laptop. He didn’t notice her entrance, absorbed as he was in the screen’s contents. She sat down next to him and put an arm around his T-shirted shoulders. “Hi,” she said softly, kissing him on the cheek.

John jerked slightly and tore his eyes from the screen, unthinkingly closing the laptop and preventing her from catching a glimpse of what he was seeing.

Marlena’s curiosity had been ignited, but she decided to make light of it. Chuckling, she teased, “Watching those porns again for inspiration?”

John rubbed his eye and chuckled too, meagerly. “Aw, you know they can’t teach us anything,” he played along in a distant kind of way. The brief levity petered out.

Marlena also noticed a thick manila folder on the coffee table. It was open and the papers visible had to do with John’s past.

She looked at John, sighing, and quietly but firmly insisted, “What’s going on?”

Following her gaze to the folder, John licked his lips and pursed them. He put the laptop down on top of the folder, obscuring the papers. Then he adjusted his position on the sofa so he could look directly at his wife. She automatically adjusted too.

“I’ll tell you. But I need to take the long way around, so just let me talk uninterrupted, alright?”

She nodded, full of trepidation.

John began, “You remember a couple weeks ago when we spent hours looking at old photo albums.”

She nodded again.

“Well the next day, when you went to work, I took those albums out again and, as I went through them, things I’d thought long handled raised their heads again.

“That beautiful picture of you, me, little Carrie, and the toddling twinners that was taken just before you disappeared brought back so much, Doc. And another of me and the kids taken just four months before you returned, churned me in a way — when I looked at it by myself — that it didn’t when we looked at it together. I just felt gut-wrenching loss.”

Marlena wanted so badly to say something comforting, but she knew she needed to be quiet. Yet, she tried, with her expression to show John that she empathized completely. She hoped this wasn’t going somewhere terrible.

“So many times during the last thirty-four years, I’ve — we’ve — jumped from one intense situation to another, and usually, I haven’t really done much introspection because, , well, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of time for it, and, I guess, if I had, I might have gone crazy.

“I mean, let’s face it, if we told our story to strangers, they would think we were just spinning wild fiction. Amnesia, agonizing deaths that didn’t last, kidnappings, mental and physical torture, executions that very nearly succeeded, brain-washing, possession, rape, serial killings that weren’t, comas, paralysis, old marriages and offspring we didn’t have a clue about, alter egos, plane crashes, explosions, falling off buildings and boats and helicopters, being committed and nearly being lobotomized, getting shot, getting poisoned, getting addicted to drugs, being convicted of crimes, another virus outbreak before this one, years of keeping our feelings hidden from each other, sickening times when we failed each other and others, more weddings than you can shake a stick at, hard relationships with the kids, — the list is endless.”

Marlena laughed softly, ruefully, at that recitation. She just had to interject though, “Oh, honey, I know it’s an appalling list, but in many of those situations, we were there for each other. You’ve saved me so many times, John. The dictionary should have your picture by the word ‘hero.’”

John, embarrassed by the compliment, quickly responded, “You’ve saved me just as many times. In fact, I think you’re probably ahead of me in the tallies. Your bravery and refusal to give up awe me.

“But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to looking at the old photos and what that dredged up. The first really horrible thing that I can remember happening in my life was your ‘death’ in 1986 — when you were gone for five years. The second one was the loss of you and the children when we learned I wasn’t Roman Brady. Those two God-awful events set the stage for just mess after mess that came after — that endless list.”

Of course, Marlena knew that all too well. Nightmares about those “messes” could still plague her, although they were thankfully far between these days. And John too still woke in cold sweats on occasion.

John looked into the distance, letting those statements stand alone for a moment. Then he continued, “Even though I just said that I haven’t allowed myself to dwell too much on what might have been, there have been times in my life when I have wondered ‘what if.’ What if Roman had never returned, and we all had gone on in ‘blissful’ ignorance thinking I was Roman. What if you had never disappeared and that family we formed had been able to move forward with all of us together?”

He let out a sharp bark of impatience with himself. “I’m probably not the only one who’s played that useless game.”

Marlena smiled sadly in agreement. She held John’s eyes with hers and assured him silently that he wasn’t alone in that. She reached out and held his left hand, with his wedding band, in her two hands and gently caressed it.

John shoved his free hand through his hair, standing some on end. He said, “Anyway, once I’d stepped through some of those landmines about the last three decades plus, I thought about the previous three decades.”

Marlena couldn’t help it. Her browline went up in query and she murmured, “How?”

John mirthlessly laughed. “Yeah. Exactly. How can I think about the first decades of my life when I don’t remember them. Good question, Doc!

“And that’s what I’ve been pondering lately when I’m here by myself. You and I have both lost our memories of each other, of our lives, during the time we’ve known each other. And, thank God, we both regained our memories. But for you, that meant regaining everything. You remember your whole life — oh, not quite…. Sorry, sweetheart.”

They both remembered that she didn’t recall the five years she’d been gone. And she didn’t remember large chunks of the possession months or of the time when she’d had amnesia and Alex North plagued them.

John continued, “But when I regained my memories, especially back in 2008, I only regained the years starting at the very end of 1985. The previous years, as you know, were still a blank. Somehow, someway, Stefano managed to wipe out those early years so completely that I can’t overcome that block.”

Unable to help herself again, Marlena had to interject, “Oh, John. I know that’s an awful thing. The five years I’m missing are bad enough, but nearly half your life is pretty close to blank.

“But, you have been able to remember bits and pieces. Brief images. You remembered being held prisoner by Stefano before. You remembered Princess Gina. You –”

“Yes. But it’s those images and the various stories about my pre-Salem past that I’m questioning now.”

“You are?”

“Yes.”

“John, I’m sorry for interrupting, but I’m not sure I understand. You have said many times that your life began when you came to Salem.”

“When I met you, Marlena.” He looked at her with great intensity, the love so present for her in his blue eyes.

“Yes.” She smiled. “But, of course, we all know that you did have some kind of life before you came to Salem. You were born someplace to some people. And now there is evidence your birth parents were Timothy and Maude Robicheaux. You were adopted by the Alamains. You went to school somewhere. You came into contact with Stefano DiMera somehow, at some time, and you seem to have worked for him, possibly as a mercenary, but we don’t know how long that really lasted. You apparently partnered with Princess Gina in some schemes to steal art. Then you were the man Stefano sent to Salem to “be” Roman. That’s kind of what we know.”

John nodded, a bit absently. “Yeah, Doc. I know.”

She waited.

He said, “But lately I’ve been thinking maybe not.”

“I don’t understand.”

He shrugged. “Think about it. What other things did we think along the way? We thought I was a DiMera for a while. We thought my name was originally Ryan Brady for a while. Neither of those appear to be true.

“My so-called memory flashes of Princess Gina? Who knows if they’re reliable? The real Princess Gina died before I came to Salem as far as we know. Maybe I knew her. Maybe I didn’t. DiMera somehow stuffed some memories of Roman’s into my head. Maybe he stuffed memories of Princess Gina that belonged to someone else into my head too.

“I don’t remember anything about the Alamains. I was too young. Lawrence Alamain said he remembered me. But was it me he remembered, or some other kid? I sure don’t remember the Robicheaux couple because I was an infant. I guess that’s why I don’t remember them. But, really, should I believe this latest narrative about my past when previous narratives turned out to be false?”

Looking at him a little helplessly, Marlena said, “I don’t know, honey. Something has to be the truth. But you’re right that there isn’t a track record that lends itself to confidence that anything you’ve been told is the truth.”

“And then, there is the whole chapter we went through — twenty five years ago now, can you believe it? –when I was told I was a real priest.”

Marlena grew still. “John, without you, I would have been lost to hell. I honestly don’t like to think about what I did when I was possessed. But whether you really were an ordained priest or not, your love, your dedication, your determination not to give up, and your willingness to go to whatever lengths necessary allowed me to be freed through God’s grace.”

“Sweetheart, I don’t want you to have to relive that. My point is that there were records that a guy who looked like I do and who was called John Black went to seminary and was an ordained priest. I even went through the official process to be released from vows I didn’t remember taking.”

Marlena nodded.

“Then I was told that I just pretended to be a priest. I was told I had impersonated a priest to steal art in Europe – with Princess Gina.”

Marlena nodded again. “Yes, it is very confusing, I agree.”

“And someplace along the line I learned how to fly planes. Not just little two-seaters but pretty damn big jets. Still don’t know where or when that supposedly became part of my resume.”

Marlena said, “Presumably you became a pilot in the employ of Stefano. It came in handy twice, John. Many people owe their lives to your piloting skills.

“And you’ve also mastered many combat and spy tactics. Again, we’ve assumed you learned those –”

“As DiMera’s Pawn. Yes.”

“But something is making you think otherwise now?”

“Until today, I’d been toying with the idea that, yeah, the facts of my past might be different than we think. That complete block on my early years makes me suspicious, you know?”

“You think it’s something that Stefano wanted to make sure you never found out?” Marlena unconsciously bit her lower lip as she thought about this. “Like what?”

John shrugged. “I don’t know, baby.”

“Speculations you’d care to share?” she asked.

“If we’d had this conversation yesterday, I might have said, maybe I was a Vietnam vet who trained as a pilot and was in special forces, or something. Maybe I was missing in action. Stefano could have gotten his hands on me then.”

“It’s possible,” she conceded.

“That’s just it, Marlena. Anything’s possible when we’ve got so little to go on.

“Well, almost anything. What’s not possible from a rational point of view is something that I admit I’ve wished were true…”

Marlena knew what he was going to say. “That you really were Roman all along.” Marlena squeezed his hand, and they looked at one another, golden brown eyes into vividly blue ones, both filled with sudden, bottomless emotion. “I know, John, I know. I’ve wished it too. Sometimes so desperately. Not because I want to hurt Roman — and I know you don’t want that either — but because if the results of the DNA tests back in ‘91 had gone in your favor, we would have found a way to reunite our family. Isabella would still have been a major factor, but –”

“But it was my intention to resume our marriage, not marry Izzy. I know you were confused by my actions, or maybe by my inactions, but as you noted back then, time had not passed for you, but it had for me, and I needed a little more time to get things in order. I’m sorry I gave you mixed signals back then. That’s one of my regrets.”

“No regrets needed. I should have been able to comprehend and adapt to that.”

He snorted. “But it didn’t matter because I wasn’t Roman. And everything went to hell after that.

“Again, I digressed.”

Marlena shook her head. “Not really, my love. You’re on target. You want to know what really happened in your life before you came to Salem in 1985. If you had been Roman, you would know the answer to that question. Roman’s history would be yours. During the years that you ‘were’ Roman, you felt very comfortable in that role, didn’t you? You were a great father to Carrie, Eric, and Sami. You were a son and a brother too. You excelled as a cop. You and I loved each other so beyond words while I was there. Everything seemed to fit so perfectly. It’s no wonder that we both would have a secret yearning for you to have been the ‘real’ Roman.”

Marlena’s voice quavered as she finished and wetness clouded her vision. She felt a tear escape. John’s thumb pad gently wiped it away, and she could then see that his eyes were full too.

They were silent for a few moments. Then John cleared his throat and spoke again, “Every once in a while I get an urge to have another DNA test done. God knows, we’ve had enough false test results in Salem over the years. But I never have done it because I figured it was pointless. There was evidence of me living a different life — whatever my name was — Robicheaux, Alamain, Black. And, of course, Roman has all the memories of his life, while I only have some, so it makes sense that he is the genuine article and I’m not. Plus, he looks like the Roman you married in 1983.” John paused. “Well, he did when he came back in ‘91. Today, he looks more like Chris Kositchek. Oh well…”

Marlena couldn’t argue with all that, although she said, “I didn’t know that you considered another DNA test.”

“Mm hmm. As I said, I never acted on it.” John looked at her to make sure she understood that but she suddenly wasn’t meeting his eyes and she nervously fiddled with her robe. “What?” he asked.

“I did.” At his confused expression she said, “I had another DNA test done.”

John’s eyebrows rose. “You did? When?”

Sighing, Marlena replied, “After Belle was born. After we confirmed you were her father. I had to make sure, John, that the previous results were correct about who was Roman. I did it in the utmost secrecy. Found a lab far away and had them test your DNA and Roman’s with Belle’s again as well as Carrie’s, Eric’s, and Sami’s on a totally anonymous basis.”

“Wow, Doc. Well, I don’t need to ask what the results were.”

“Yeah. I never told you because the results were the same as before.”

As John absorbed that, Marlena said, “Honey, about your early years, there’s nothing wrong with continuing to search for answers.”

Focusing again on the topic at hand, John replied, “I know. It’s just that we’ve been down this road so many times before, and I didn’t want to bring it up again with you right now because you’ve got enough to deal with at the hospital. There wasn’t anything to report anyway until today.

“And,” he said a little uncomfortably, “every time I try to dig up answers, there’s the inevitable risk of uncovering something that will darken our lives rather than bring in some sunshine.

“I mean, Stefano is an evil monster, but a little part of me always thought there was a slim chance that he destroyed my early memory because there are more things there I just wouldn’t be able to handle.”

Alarmed at that, his wife exclaimed, “John, no. I don’t believe that.”

“Hey. I’m just looking at the few facts we’ve got. And the fact is, Stefano has been able to put me under his control. We know he succeeded in 2008 when you found me in his basement, and I emerged a heartless bastard who kept calling you ‘Blondie.’”

Marlena made a face at that, and for a moment, John got sidetracked. He laughed at her disgust and nudged her, kidding, “Hey, is ‘Blondie’ really that bad? What’s the difference between ‘Doc’ and ‘Blondie’?”

Gritting her teeth, Marlena shook her head warningly. “Don’t you dare start up again with ‘Blondie,’ John Black!”

He chuckled. “Not to worry, Doc.” Then he got serious again.

“And, we’ve assumed, my earlier transformation into the Mercenary was a lingering effect of whatever it was DiMera did to me in my blank years.” John grimaced. “So, yeah, I was thinking about the possible downsides of doing further investigation into my past.”

“But?” she prompted.

“But, you know I want the truth. But now I think the truth may be something totally out of left field.

“I mentioned Jim Hankins before. He called me today to tell me that the ISA had raided another of Stefano’s hideouts and found a huge stash of records. It was a very well hidden place. It was pretty much by chance, not skill, that it was discovered. Stefano probably never thought it would be found.

“Jim said they had been sifting through the information they found for more than two months already. Some of it was in paper form, some on computer, some on microfilm and other media.

“John Black is mentioned in some of the records.”

“Oh, John.”

“Yup. But what may be most important is that they found a copy of a book on microfilm that might be the same as the book that Stefano destroyed at Maison Blanche.

“Oh John.” Marlena repeated. “Is that what Jim Hankins sent you by email?

John nodded solemnly.

“Have you read it?”

“Not yet.”

“Were you just about to when I came in?”

“Actually, no. I was reading something else he sent. Something that has turned my view of my past upside down, although I haven’t really processed it yet.” John reached for his laptop and opened it. The text on the screen was backlit and John said to his wife, “This is quite fantastic, and, honestly, it carries very dark consequences if remotely true, so brace yourself.”

He read out loud:

“I have discovered something I’d never imagined. I always thought of myself as the great puppeteer or the ringmaster. The one who held the lives of others in his hands. But I’ve been deceiving myself. Well, more accurately, I’ve been deceived.

“It isn’t I who decides who does what in Salem. It is a bunch of writers, producers and TV executives. They decide the fates of all of us. Who lives, who dies and when. They decide who marries, who divorces, who has children, who loses their child. They choose who acts with honor and who doesn’t. And why do they do all this? Because we are their entertainment. Our deeds — however pure or filthy, our heartache, our joy, our physical and mental pain, our ability to love — it all is given to us by these Machiavellian manipulators who far outpace my own capacity for imagining ways to torment Salemites. All so that their audiences can observe us in our little video zoo!

“I don’t have free will. Neither does Roman Brady, John Black, Marlena Evans, Hope Brady, Kate Roberts, etc. We’re all puppets for voyeurs. That’s right. We’re in a weird “Matrix” of our own. We’re another The Truman Show. In a sense, we’ve got gods – the writers, etc. – between us and God Almighty dictating our every move and emotion.

“Now a lot of people aren’t going to believe this even if they read it. But it is the truth.”

Marlena laughed out loud. “Stefano wrote that?”

“Apparently.” John wasn’t laughing along with his wife.

“John. Come on. That’s impossible.”

“Is it? How much taller am I than Roman?

“Several inches,” she admitted sheepishly.

“But I was unconditionally accepted as Roman for over five years, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, but…”

“We’ve all seen TV and web programs, Doc. We know that sometimes an actor leaves a part and the show will substitute someone else to play that same role. Both actors are accepted as that character, right?”

“Yes, but that’s fiction. That’s make-believe, John. We’re not fictional characters. We’re real, flesh-and-blood people. We –”

“We suffer, we love, we make mistakes, we feel despair or hope, we struggle through when times are tough, we’re stubborn, we sometimes don’t act like ourselves, we fight, we work, we play, we make love, we have families, we have enemies, we rage, we sing and dance, we live, we die.”

“YES!” she said almost defiantly.

“Okay. But much as I despise DiMera, if he is right about this, it makes sense of all the crazy nonsense that keeps popping up in our lives. If our lives are being choreographed by a series of ‘writers’ with their own egos, their own levels of tolerance to do their homework about our histories, their own story penchants, their own favorite characters, etc., of course they change things as they go along. Of course one writer thinks I was a priest before I came to Salem, while another thinks I was an art thief. One decides I’m Roman Brady, another I’m John Black. One doesn’t care if I live or die, while another cares very much. One thinks I’m a hero while another thinks I’m an automaton. One thinks we have a storybook relationship and another pits us against each other as if we were in The War of the Roses movie.”

Marlena had to admit he had a point. But she had an argument to make. “But, John, if that were the case, why would the ‘writer’ who is calling the shots now allow Stefano to have such a ‘revelation’? Why would the writer let you find it? Does that make any storyline sense? They want us to do their bidding, right? No point in letting the peons know what the king is thinking!”

“Maybe the Salem story is coming to an end — maybe for a reason that’s out of the ‘writer’s’ hands.”

“Oh, John. That’s a grim idea.”

“Sorry, sweetheart. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Well, you’re just being honest and following the theory out to its logical conclusions.”

John began tapping some keys on the computer.

“What are you doing now?”

“I’m downloading the book that Jim sent. The one that might be a match to the one I never got to read at Maison Blanche.”

“Will that prove something?”

John brought it up on the screen. But “the book” was empty. It had pages, but they contained no writing. Except for one or two pages.

Marlena and John looked at each other. They both realized that the book would only have further writing if another “writer” took up the story of this book again and filled in details about John’s life.

“I guess it is pointless to seek answers to my blocked years,” John said solemnly. “There’s nothing there unless the ‘writer’ conjures it up.”

After a few moments, Marlena reached over to the laptop and closed the lid. She rose from the couch clutching John’s hand. “Come on, honey. Let’s go back to bed. No matter who’s pulling the strings of the days of our lives, I love you. You are the love of my life. You have been since I met you. You always will be. No one and nothing is going to change that. We just won’t let them. We’ll prove Stefano wrong. We will exert our own free wills.”

John grinned at her. He pulled her into a luscious kiss before he answered, “You are, as I’ve said so many times, my beginning and my end. I love you with every fiber of my being. It’s you and me, baby. Now and always.”

With their arms around each other, the couple headed out of the living room, John switching off lights as they went. Marlena suddenly tilted her head up, and peering intently at the ceiling, she said loudly, “Hey, writers! Can you hear me? Fix it so John is the real Roman!”

Both she and John broke into happy laughter at that. Then they climbed back up the stairs and disappeared into their bedroom. They shut the door. They had privacy. No “writer,” no viewer, no camera followed them.