And the rest, is Johann

Chapter 11. Alea iacta est (I)

"Can you make sense of any of it?" He finally decided to lean on the table, taking a couple of pages from that one dossier.

"What do you mean?" Anna played the offended one, answering his mockery. "It took me a while to get used to your calligraphy though... so fancy..."

Regardless of any aesthetic concerns, Johann's writing surely showed the dullness of his own inexistence, one he kept reading as she decided to stand up, heading towards the shelves with outstanding precision. Among that labyrinth of paper, Nina picked up a sketchbook.

"What is this...?" She was now standing right in front of him, as she offered him his own creations.

"Drawings..." that sketchbook had over a decade. And it had been one of the few possessions he had dragged home after home, until being forgotten there, when there was no longer a twin to reminiscence, but to obliterate, in merciless avoidance.

She frowned, not in the mood for any further mockery when she thought there was something more important at stake. Opening it, she passed the pages, with a brief stop to show him each of them in case he had forgotten.

Johann simply leaned back, waiting to hear whatever wild assumption she was building before excusing himself.

"They are all of me..." She whispered, astonished. They were just a series of simple portraits, in pencil, sometimes he even attempted watercolors, of her through different life stages. The obvious improvement in technique should expose that they had been drawn by her contemporary counterpart.

"Yes."

"Why...?"

"Because I missed you." He had an excuse. A rather simple one. "And I wanted to look at you." Johann found that train of thought very human-like.

Nina frowned again to look back at the drawing she was holding now. A 20-year-old her sitting under a tree she had never sat under, surrounded by flowers she had never seen, wearing a dress she never owned. Nothing in that drawing meant stalking.

Maybe that was the whole problem.

"How much time have you spent thinking about me...?" The question was little more than a breathless whisper.

Johann had thought frequently of her, if not all the time, whenever his mind was not occupied enough. And he was glad, though, because even if all she had offered him was a combination of nostalgia, misery, and anger, it had always been better than being alone with his thoughts.

"Answer, please..." a shaking command now. He hadn't expected such an emotional reaction to some drawings. She hadn't even commented on his style.

"I have you present in my thoughts more often than not." He wasn't conceding more, not for now. "What's so surprising...?" She was too restless to be about a simple collection of portraits. She had probably found herself mentioned countless times in all those notes. At least in that matter, he wasn't contradictory.

"You are obsessed with me..." Then it was he who had to frown like that statement hadn't been more than obvious from the very beginning. Only then she looked at him. "You do love me, Johann..." Months of believing a lie, she thought.

He remained silent, answering her already.

"I don't love you." He meant it to be harsh, to hurt. Humiliating even. She was still at risk of falling for such naiveté. And he was concerned. "On my own terms..." And impulses like that one made him have faith, if only for an instant. "I might still be able to reminiscence what it could be considered as affection, for you. It's plausible." His eyes narrowed, challenging even. Could she made him love her? "So yes, maybe I love you... in my own aberrant way." He also owed honesty.