Subj: The Letter, Part 24
Date: 10/4/01 9:16:18 PM Central Daylight Time
From: RJ Jamison

Barnabas felt his tie to Taylor and Julia as he watched his ancestors’ lives, the lives that had potentially tied him to Angelique before birth. The idea that somehow Miranda Du Val’s manipulation of Braden Collins and his family had resulted in the tragedies of his existence was startling and at the same time, comforting. It held the promise of relieving some of the internal guilt that plagued Barnabas’s every moment of life.

As Braden and Althia stood before the fire laughing, the trio of watchers were quickly jolted out of the environment of New Bedford and into that of Collinsport. Barnabas recognized the room at Collinwood as Julia’s. He had been there both to comfort and terrorize her over the years. He saw Julia as she was when they first met; her longer hair, the ‘historian’ outfit she wore consisting of a plain gray sweater and skirt. Barnabas recalled the irony of how the same day that Julia was revealed to be not a historian but Dr. Hoffman, she left Collinwood in that attire and returned completely remade. Her hair was cut short, her clothes much more tailored, her jewelry accessorized and her make up much more vivid. Dr. Hoffman was not a mousy historian prying into the lives of the Collins family but a well respected dedicated professional on sabbatical or so she said.

Before his vision Barnabas saw Julia sitting alone on her bed, hands clutching one of the four posters of the bed and eyes shut against some horror she was trying to block out. Taylor felt a change in the underpinnings of the foundation that supported his journey with Barnabas and Julia. He felt them try to pull away from this scene but Taylor was profoundly interested. Their arrival at this interval meant it contained great significance to one or both of them. The journey was well choreographed by their own subconscious as well as the gods of the Kamayur and Urubu-Kaapor. Julia was obviously in psychological pain and he sensed it had to do with Barnabas Collins. Taylor used his strength and will to continue observing this scene even as his fellow travelers tried to pull away.

“God, how can this be happening?” Julia whispered to no one in the room. Her thoughts were suddenly audible to the observers. How can I feel this way about him, he’s evil! Certainly I can cure his affliction but not his borderline personality disorder! How can I be attracted to that? What is wrong with me? God, Dave Woodard I could kill you, why did you plant that idea in my head! Why!! It was supposed to be a cover story but it wasn’t supposed to be real! I am not in love with him, I’m not!

A knock at the door suddenly startled the observers and the observed. “Just a minute.” Julia stood, checked her reflection in the mirror, wiped away the few traces of tears and went to the door. Barnabas Collins stood before her.

“Dr. Hoffman, I must speak with you.” Barnabas brusquely entered the room and watched as Julia shut the door. “I want to discuss our treatment schedule.”

“What about it?” She asked him in voice devoid of emotion.

“I would like to adjust the schedule for this evening as I’ve asked Victoria to –“

Julia threw her head back in exasperation. “I’ve told you many times, the injections must occur at the same time each day. It is vital to the treatment schedule.”

“Doctor, you’ve never fully and satisfactorily explained this to me—“

“Why don’t you go to medical school if you want to understand it!” Julia snapped at him. “I am the doctor, I’ve asked very little of you and am promising you a normal life. Why is adhering to a schedule so difficult for you?”

“I am not used to anyone talking to me in such a manner.” Barnabas replied menacingly.

“And I’m not used to having my orders ignored nor my medical directives questioned.”

“You do not order me, doctor.”

Julia shook her head and thought, shall it be another argument then? “Barnabas, the errant cell in your blood stream can not be allowed to grow. Constant and consistent injections are what is keeping this in check and will eventually eradicate the cell. I don’t know how to explain it more plainly to you.”

“Is there any way to speed up the injection schedule, I find this interference in my life tiresome.”

Julia glared at him. “I promise you a cure for an affliction you’ve had for nearly two hundred years and you think your dates with Victoria Winters are more important?!”

Barnabas eyed the woman before him. Was her anger professional or personal? Was she bristling from the discourtesy to her time or unhappy that he preferred Victoria Winters? He was uncertain about the doctor’s emotions of late. Since Dave Woodward had suggested their relationship was more than ‘historical’, Barnabas had noted that Julia seemed to allow the family this assumption as well. He was not comfortable with it at all as it interfered with his pursuit of Victoria Winters. However, it was an easy explanation to over observant eyes about Julia’s very late hours at his home.

Quickly the observers were pulled in several directions. In a matter of minutes Taylor observed many scenes, most of them disturbing, of Barnabas and Julia’s six year relationship. He saw Barnabas’s anger, his violence, his inattentiveness and his love for other women. And through it all was Julia patient, supportive and alarmingly steadfast in the face of it all. They argued and reconciled many times over and together they traveled to different times. Barnabas and Julia always together with his attention invariably averted to some other woman who seemed to remind him of different times and needs. And interspersed with these scenes were moments of great tenderness when Barnabas admitted and displayed his true feelings for Julia. Taylor very clearly saw what Barnabas and Julia could not. Barnabas for many years could not accept that Julia loved him as he was. He felt no acceptance in this, only shame and suspicion. Why would Julia love such a tortured and often cruel soul? Why love someone who emotionally victimizes you every chance he gets? Why had she not checked herself into a hospital for analysis? This riddle was finally being answered for them. Ostensibly it was guilt; Julia’s guilt over Taylor and their marriage. She hadn’t given her unwavering devotion to her husband and it caused a rift. When love found her again, no matter the circumstances, Julia’s response was to give what she hadn’t before and be what she hadn’t been. She set aside her career, her personal needs. She loved Barnabas without limit and without regard to the costs to herself. She would be steadfast, sure and supportive to the man she loved regardless of his feelings for her, regardless of the effect this dedication would have on her own psyche and health. She did this for years without much thought or consideration or self-evaluation. She failed to see what she as a doctor would so clearly have diagnosed and treated.

Taylor’s journey through Julia and Barnabas’s angst-ridden relationship halted fleetingly at a moment that was fraught with pain, sacrifice and sorrow. He sensed it was in their recent past together although it appeared to be a hundred years before judging by their clothing. How had they managed to travel through time, to the past and into the future? Their relationship and its journey astounded him. All this time together, all these chances and still they were not together, still not at the heart of their truth even though Barnabas knew he could not survive without Julia. He was nothing without her. He had many times declared he would never leave her behind nor survive without her.

“Trask killed her before she knew. I loved her Julia. She was my only love, and I never knew.” Barnabas dressed in clothing of the mid-1800s stood before Julia. The immobile expression on her face did not betray her deep feelings of hurt and despair. Here we go again, she said to herself. He loves whomever he can’t have or whomever does not want him. Barnabas then doubled over in pain and Julia found a gunshot wound on his arm. Automatically she turned off her responses to those words and had Barnabas sit down. She quickly left the room for her medical bag but stopped on the stairs for only a moment to reflect again on what Barnabas had said. She shook her head and lamented Barnabas’s most recent grief-stricken declaration. Will this man ever know how he truly feels or will he always walk around in a fog? Why am I here with him? Why? I can’t do this anymore, I can’t.

This event seemed to precipitate a change in both of them. Barnabas, a new man in a new time suddenly free of ultimate culpability in his family’s fate, spent a great deal of time thinking about his life and loves. Upon realization of his own many psychological scars and how they had steered his life down many wrong paths and choices, he decided to move toward Julia. She had been a steadfast friend and companion. He saw her in a new light and found desire for her filling his days and nights but she was gone. Julia had seen and was disgusted by the declaration Barnabas had made for a woman named Angelique. She had finally seen herself in full as she was, an appendage to a man who cared for her but not as she wanted. She had seen that her dedication to him was troubling, and destructive to them both. Julia also spent weeks walking the estate of Collinwood in search of herself. Knowing that there was no one she could speak with, professionally, she poured her soul into notebooks and evaluated them in as detached a fashion as possible. She became her own therapist. As Julia rediscovered her life and hinted at moving away from Collinwood, she was faced with the fact that others at Collinwood would not let her go. While Barnabas made repeated requests for her company, she kept him at bay. The few occasions she was with him, she was evasive and focused on other tasks. Eventually she did seek him out, in order to finally gain his permission to publish an article based on her research about him. He did not know that she did this as a test of herself. Her main objective in taking control of her life was to refocus on her career and research. She was determined to reduce Barnabas to a clinical object and to rid herself of the romanticism she associated with him. By taking each step of their ‘medical’ journey and translating it into a medical journal, she found him slowly being changed into a patient again. Her feelings while not gone were coming under control and she gained greater objectivity about their relationship. As she worked furiously on the article and in turn on changing the nature of her feelings for Barnabas, the tenth anniversary of Taylor’s disappearance dawned on her. All of her feelings of inadequacy about love, life and romance flooded her thoughts again. The deep depression that set over her and was noted by all could not be easily shaken. Going back to the life she had before meeting Barnabas seemed impossible. How could she live without love after knowing it, even in the tortured form she knew so well? But leave she must. She would not sit and watch Barnabas fall for another woman who was Josette or even worse, a facsimile of Angelique. Six years of waiting was more than enough. He would never desire her, Julia Hoffman. In the midst of this turmoil and Julia’s decision to finally leave Collinwood for the old life she had inhabited up north, Wyndcliffe burned to the ground.

Taylor continued to watch as Julia stood before the blazing fire of Wyndcliffe. The urgency of several men trying to squelch the fire did not jolt her from the shock. Julia remained immobile as she stared at the flames as they pierced her already raw heart. Just on hour earlier she had been mad with anxiety, directing the disbursement of her patients and the staff. Without Wyndcliffe she had nowhere to go, no one or place to run to. She was destined to stay with the Collins family, destined to be their helping hand and nothing more. Julia Hoffman, private, guarded and inhumanly in control of her emotions, felt the ache in her throat, the ache of trying to deny the tears. The ache became unbearable and Julia began to breath heavily to staunch the pain and flow of tears. It did not work. Her eyes became filled with tears but she refused to let them fall. Reflected in the deep pools of sorrow were the hundreds of orange tongues eating her dream. Wyndcliffe had been the one saving grace of her life before and after Barnabas and now she had nothing. It was devoured before her in flames.

Julia pulled from her coat pocket a letter she had retrieved recently from her personal belongings, which had been in storage in the town adjacent to Wyndcliffe. Thank god she had emptied out her apartment at the hospital for the new full time Administrative Director she had hired before her most recent journeys to parallel time, 1995 and then 1840. While she had lived weeks maybe months in those times, only a few weeks had passed in 1971. It was in finding these letters after returning from 1840 that she began to fully examine and understand her relationship with Barnabas. She read again the first few lines:

My Dearest,

I find writing this letter is most difficult. I have never envisioned my life without you. Not since the day I heard you laugh on the steps of the Blaylock Building. From that very moment I was captivated, I was yours. But you have never been mine. . .

“I’ve never belonged to anyone, maybe not even my own self.” Julia stuffed the letter back into her pocket.

“Dr. Hoffman,” The Fire Chief approached. “I don’t have good news for you.”

Julia nodded. “It’s a wash isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so. We’ll do a complete investigation but I bet the guy who was raving that he did it—“

“He is very ill, perhaps he should have been in a higher security facility.” Julia shook her head, had it been ignorance or miscalculation that had led her to accept this patient. She would never know. “No one was seriously injured, that is a miracle.”

“Your staff is to be commended. They were organized and got everyone out quick, quite a team you have there.”

“Had, quite a team I had.” Julia walked away from the scene.

Each observer responded differently to the scenes they were being shown and they felt one another’s response. Barnabas could feel Julia’s intense sorrow and loneliness. She in turn for the first time felt his own guilt at his treatment of her and his deep abiding devotion to her. She also felt what he had hidden from himself and her for so long, his love for her. She also knew his fear of that love and his fear that it would change him or her. He had seen the depths of this love before and it had not resulted in anything good for him or his family. He had threatened Angelique because of that love, he had promised her
final destruction at the cost of his own. The strength with which he felt it and the strength upon which it had rested frightened him. Julia’s love for him was unshakable. He had seen that all exclusive feeling in Angelique’s eyes. To know that he too was capable of a blind love wherein he would destroy whomever threatened it had shaken him and thrown him into a state of denial. He denied his feelings for Julia once again and while Julia had almost confessed to him after Angelique had set him free, he did not allow the feeling to blossom. Instead Barnabas Collins, understood first-hand the strength and destructive power of that love. And fully comprehending for the first time that for the person for whom this love enveloped, nothing else mattered nor existed. Knowing this and feeling it within himself finally allowed Barnabas to understand Angelique.

Together the observers watched as Barnabas’s understanding was convoluted into guilt and remorse as Angelique lay dying. He must’ve help create her feelings for him and therefore helped create all that she was and did. He was responsible for all that befell him, all of it. Had he not loved her not even a bit, during those long nights in Martinique? Yes, he must’ve and out of all that passion and love arose Angelique’s hatred at being put aside for a younger, landed woman of the fallen French aristocracy. Her hatred became understandable, as had her love. And what had merely been lust on Barnabas’s side was reshaped in those few moments into love.

As Barnabas and Julia with Taylor existed in this moment, he understood he did not love Angelique although he professed it. He understood he had loved Julia and his feelings for her were mixed with what he had said in guilt to Angelique. And Julia again saw how Barnabas was troubled by his own feelings for her and how he attempted to avoid loving her at all costs. It was not reassuring to know that he loved her. It was demoralizing to see how hard he tried not to succumb.

Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis Production.