A Long Time Coming

Disclaimer: "Beyond: Two Souls" is owned by Sony Computer Entertainment and Quantic Dream.

Author's Note: Hello, my readers. I have been meaning to do this, but I must note that this will be a one-shot. After having gone through a few playthroughs of "Beyond: Two Souls," especially with the "Life" ending path, I felt that there was one part missing. This story will be the reunion of Jodie and her adoptive parents. Why I am doing this is because I felt that there should have been at least a reunion between Jodie and Susan, because out of the two parents, Susan actually showed love and affection towards Jodie. I didn't like Philip, as I was able to see that he wanted nothing to do with Jodie. This is mainly a story where Jodie visits her adoptive parents, but wants to reconnect with Susan mostly.

While I am aware that she reunited with her biological mother in the actual story, it just felt like the ones who she knew as her parents just disappeared and never returned again. I did like how in the "Life" endings that she could choose between being alone, being with Ryan (Whom I did not really care for, but I was able to see that he did care about Jodie), return to Jay (There was better chemistry right there), or go live with the people she met in the "Homeless" chapter (My favorite out of all of them, as they all felt like a family).

Just letting you know, I have seen the "Beyond" ending, but I don't think there is a reason to do a version of this for that path. I would like to think that Jodie's spirit could watch over Susan, like she did with the others like Ryan, Cole, Jay and Cory, and also the "Homeless" crew.

Anyway, that's all I needed to say. I hope you enjoy this.

Ever since the Black Sun was destroyed, my memory has been disintegrating. I spent too much time on the other side. Now it's eating away at my mind, erasing what's left of it. My memories are all confused, slowly self-destructing, fading like a dream when you wake up.

I'm losing my sense of time. I no longer know what happened before or after. Everything's playing inside my head at the same time. It's like watching the same film looping over and over again, a chaos of images with no order.

So I've been writing night and day for weeks, trying to put my life down on paper. If I forget everything, these pages will be my memory.

A news report stated:

Three months after the fact, the investigation continues, in an effort to determine the cause of the accident that cost 283 lives on a Pentagon military base. Government representatives confirm that the authorities are working hand in hand with the investigators to shed light on this appalling tragedy.

The CIA is leaving me alone for the moment. I suppose they're too busy building another condenser to worry about me. I know they'll never abandon their experiments, now that they know what's on the other side.

Honestly, I don't give a damn. Now I need to reconstruct my life, my life without Aiden.

For as long as I can remember, I dreamt of living without him, untied, without his constant presence by my side. I got what I wanted. I've never been so unhappy in my life. I feel like a part of me has been amputated. I'm crying all day. I know it's stupid. Shit, I miss him so much.

It took months, months of nothing passing by. I woke up. I knew it was time, time to start again, to build a new life.

It was so obvious. Deep inside, I always knew. I just needed the silence around me to hear what I was feeling.

I know that deep down I loved Ryan, despite all the shit he put me through. There was also a side of me that wanted to reconnect with Jay, maybe see how he, Cory, and Paul were doing at their ranch. Most of all, I wanted to see how Stan, Tuesday, Jimmy, and Walter were doing, and also Tuesday's baby girl, Zoey.

But there was one other thing that I wanted to do. It's been more than 15 years. I had only talked to them a handful of times since Nathan and Cole took me in. I can't say much about Philip, and even though she was not my real mother, Susan loved and cared for me like I was her own. They never told me this, but I know why she loved me dearly. It made me cry when I found out as a little girl that they had a child previously, but he died. While I had to see Norah before she died, I knew that there was someone else who I wanted to see.

It took some time for me to locate them, but after that amount of time, I finally tracked down Susan and Philip Holmes. I remember the day they had told me that they were moving away. I guess they needed to be away, especially after Aiden had choked that boy for trying to suffocate me with the snow. After everything I had been through, it was better that we were not in contact for a long time. Imagine how they would have felt if they had heard that Aiden nearly killed those kids at that party.

I found my way to their current home. They lived in a smaller home than the one that I remembered. They had no children to take care of, so it was understandable. I knocked on the door. The door opened, and I saw a woman answer.

"Hello, may I help you?" The woman said.

"Hello, is this the Holmes residence?" I said.

"Yes, it is, who are you?" The woman said.

"Is your name Susan Holmes?" I replied.

The woman did not look much different than how I remembered. She still had some of that auburn hair, but it had some gray in it at this point. However, she still maintained her beauty, as she still looked like the same beautiful woman who I once considered to be my mother. She had aged, but did not look different than I remembered.

"Yes," the woman said. "Can you tell me who you are?"

"It's me," I said.

It didn't take long for her to figure out who I was, as the woman looked at me as she tilted her head and moved closer, with the one word that came out of her mouth was, "Oh my god, Jodie?"

"Yes, it's me."

Just then, I noticed that she shook a bit as a tear trickled down her eye and smiled once she found out who I was, as she did not waste time to hug me right then and there. More tears of joy ran down her eyes, like she had been waiting to see me again for so long.

"Oh, Jodie, I missed you so much!" Susan said. "I'm sorry that I didn't come visit you much after a while."

"I missed you, too," I said, as a tear trickled down my face at that moment. "I still have that picture of us."

The way she hugged me and her reaction felt like it was a long overdue reunion. Even though I was placed under the care of Nathan and Cole, I was still her daughter and the way she reacted, it was a long time coming for her to see who was once her little girl again.

She turned around and yelled, "Philip, come here!"

From a distance, I heard a man's voice say, "What? What's going on?"

The man walked up, and the moment he made eye contact with me, he had a puzzled look on his face. It was definitely the same man who I remembered as my father, except his hair was fully gray and was balder than I remembered. As terrible as this would sound, but it would be safe to say that Susan aged much better than Philip.

"Susan, is that…?"

"Yes, Philip, it's her."

It had been so long since we had seen each other. I know that Philip did not want me around, especially with the things that Aiden had done when I was living with them. Surprisingly, though, he seemed more surprised to see me, rather than look like he wanted me gone.

I went inside their house and Susan and I went right into the living room at sat on the couch. I had explained to her about everything that I went through, like my time in the CIA to meeting my real mother and also stopping the Black Sun. Susan had told me that the reason she and Philip moved out of the old neighborhood was because of what Aiden did to that one boy, when he could have killed me. There was one thing that I did not expect her to bring up, though.

"What happened to Nathan Dawkins?" she said.

I sat there in silence for a minute, with a lot of hesitation in my body to even respond to that question. I responded, "He died. There was nothing I could do."

"I'm sorry, and like I said before, I am sorry did not see you," she said, and looked around to make sure Philip was not around. "I wanted to. I really did want to see you, but Philip really did not want me or both of us to. I thought about you every day for the past 15 years."

And then came something that I did not expect to hear from her.

"I even heard that you were on the run from the law or something. It was all over the news. The thing your father said, it broke my heart. He said that he was not surprised that you would be using your 'powers' and that it got you in trouble."

Being that I had a strong mother-daughter bond with her in my childhood, a tear started to drip from my eye, too. I thought that what was lost from me was Aiden, and while I got to see my real mom, whether it was through channeling her through Aiden or in the psychiatric hospital she was in, Susan was the one woman who loved me like I was her own, despite a lot of the things that Aiden did. I leaned over to hug her once again.

When we continued to talk, Philip looked at both of us from a distance. Susan turned around to face him, and was given a signal to come to him. She got up and I was told to stay there. I sat there and overheard some of the things that they had talked about.

"What is she doing here? How did she find us?" Philip said.

"Philip, why are you doing this? We had not seen her in 15 years, and she has been through a lot," Susan said.

"Come on, you know that she is not normal," Philip said. "Remember what she did to that one kid? Also, wasn't she wanted by the CIA at one point?"

"Look, she came all this way to find us," Susan said. "The least you could do is just show her some courtesy. Besides, she is not the same little girl that you remember."

"I don't care, when I see her, she is still the same little monster that I remember," Philip said.

It was apparent that Philip never really let go of the past, but the one thing that he should know is that I had been through much worse throughout the years and that I just wanted to visit someone from the past. I knew deep down that he didn't want me anymore, but I did not think that he would still hold on to those thoughts about me after many years.

I sat there and then the TV came on. It went into static and on the screen, something came on the screen. It said "Still here."

What did that mean? Did it mean it what I think it meant? I smiled, but I also had to shake my head to make sure that he would not do anything. Lucky for both of us, he cooperated.

Susan and Philip came back into the living room and approached me. I got up and said, "Look, if this was a bad time, I understand. I will just go now."

Before I walked away, Susan put her hand out.

"Jodie, wait," she said. "Look, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to stay for dinner. We have a lot of things to talk about and you came all this way. You can't go now."

"I would love that," I replied.

I stayed at the Holmes residence for dinner and though I was able to see that Philip didn't trust me, it seemed that Susan had talked to him about letting me stay for a little longer.

Sometime after we had dinner, I took off. There were some things that I needed to do, and other people to see. Before I left, Susan stopped me and hugged me once again.

"Listen, Jodie, you are welcome to come by anytime," she said. "Also, feel free to call me once in a while."

"I will do that…Mom."

I was so hesitant in calling her that, because I had not had any contact with her in so long. However, despite meeting Norah, my real mother, I still considered Susan to be my mother. It was still hard to consider Philip to be my father, though.

Either way, I am happy that I got to see them again.