Nina's stare was locked on the piece of lemon floating on the cup of black tea, in perfect sync with the overwhelming tranquility of that lazy Sunday afternoon on the otherwise busy Munich.
The soft light bathed that room exquisitely, and she felt almost overwhelmed by that sensation of peace.
'We can go to Munich.' Johann had stated his wish to leave Heidelberg, the very next day. 'I have an apartment there.' He had never mentioned he had one.
And so, they had, and for a week she had taken care of everything while he was recovering from the injuries, a very bad sickness that had left in in bed for most of the time and the emotional turmoil of being loved. If there was any turmoil to begin with.
She turned her head to the other sofa, finding the chaos of blonde flocks lying over the armrest and the two hands holding a book, the only parts of him visible from that position.
And back to that slice of lemon.
And back to the curtains and their soft dance under the summer breeze.
Enough.
Her mind rushed over the hundreds of excuses she might have to start a conversation, but none was needed as she found Johann's eyes locked on her, whose head had leaned backwards the bare minimum for him to see her.
Still, as usual, he said nothing, did nothing.
"Were you reading my mind?" He might, as he seemed to do exactly that every time she had wished for his attention, and he delivered to a wish she hadn't even verbalized.
Johann smiled, satisfied like always with his own omniscience.
"I can also hear you constantly moving on the seat." He didn't move one bit, but the book ended up over his lap, completely closed. "Do you want to talk?"
Nina took a deep breath and looked at the room around them, then back to him, to find him sitting now.
And back to the room again, and the mundanity of it all. The Classic, dark furniture felt all too predictable in that equally collection of white and cream walls. Luxurious indeed, but incredibly underwhelming.
Yet she had no idea what she had been expecting.
"I was just curious about this place...." She looked at the room once more, this time focusing on the marble fireplace in front of him, his personal choice instead of a TV it seemed. "Have you lived here... for long?" At all?
He remained silent, like he needed to think the answer.
"It's the closest I've had to a home of my own." He not quite answered. "One I never disclosed to anyone."
Johann surely knew how to get her attention, even when being so incredibly vague. So, she rapidly stood, forgetting that tea and the bored lemon for the sake of curiosity, maybe even dark secrets.
Her eyes deviated for a moment to that consistent set of paintings in the living room, a collection that captured the same melancholy that one could find in David Caspar Friedrich's landscapes.
"So... is there something interesting here? Something... personal?" She walked towards the man, who had shoved off the blanket and was already standing.
He was feeling better... no? He looked better, so it might not be so bad to interrupt his rest for a bit. Johann's eyes followed her sudden excitement with a restrained, yet amused smile on his lips.
"Let's have breakfast first. I'm starving," all her interest rapidly drifted towards the man who, for the first time, maybe in his whole life, was admitting possessing a primeval instinct as it was hunger. At least while sober.
Exploring the apartment could wait, for now.
"A meal now counts more like a dinner."
"I haven't eaten anything yet today," his eyes narrowed, like challenging her to contradict him. "So, for me is breakfast."
Which actually said more about the kind of food he was willing to eat.
"Ok, ok... what would you like to have then?" After a few seconds of deliberation, she reached a verdict. "Fruit salad and... crepes?"
"And coffee." Then he walked past her, bringing her along to guide her to the kitchen she perfectly know where to find, right on the other side of the corridor.
"Is this really your home?" She repeated more to herself. She was admiring every single detail they crossed paths with, the paintings in the corridor, the carpets, like they all hid some secrets about their proprietor.
"It is." He still found her enthusiasm entertaining, turning to watch her as she had stopped in the middle of the corridor to admire the peeks she could get from every room in the house from that position.
"How big is this?"
"160 meters... maybe a little more." He opened the grazed door to the kitchen only to invite her to enter first. "It's just a nice apartment in the city center." He excused like there was any way most people could afford it.
"Thanks," she added.
He approached her by the counters, opening the shelves with mild curiosity. She had fully supplied the kitchen already, assuming they would spend weeks there, even months. "I'll take care of the fruit, and also the coffee." He turned around to the table, where she had already placed a bowl containing all sorts of fruits, she had been able to find in the closest supermarket.
"Anyway, I don't think you particularly enjoy the idea of having someone in... your space." Opening the fridge, she grabbed a couple eggs and milk.
She heard him chuckle as he was looking for the cutlery, checking a couple drawers before finding it.
"I bought this house with exactly that purpose." His eyes fixated on the blade of the knife he was holding, his grip getting firmer, holding it like a weapon instead of kitchen tool, if only for a second. Then he relaxed, like nothing had happened, and those red apples became the victims instead, splitting them in two. "I'm not the loner you identify me with. In fact, experience tells me that, even with all my obvious limitations, I might rather enjoy company better than solitude."
With the bag of flour in her hand she turned towards him.
"You might enjoy the entertainment of having people around you, but that doesn't change the fact that you are the loneliest, most isolated person in the whole world." She had chosen a scornful tone, so appropriate. "And you not being able to notice it just makes is so much more obvious." And pathetic.
"That's a curious statement coming from you." He hadn't taken her words well, and his eyes showed anger, menace even. "I lack the emotional capacity, so I can only pretend and rationalize. However, you don't, yet here you are, choosing absolute isolation with me over the many potential, emotionally fulfilling relationships you could have developed during these months you have invested in me." Once the apples were turned into tiny pieces he aimed at the oranges. "I'm surprised that this isolation hasn't affected you the slightest and instead you look quite content with our current situation. So, my question is, how much of a loner are you, sister?"
She stared silently at a question that required no answer and he smiled, as vindictive as triumphal, for wining a little skirmish that he identified as total warfare.
Luckily, he was done with his little attack.
"I was considering getting married, eventually," he added in such a carefree way. It still amazed her how rapidly he was able to switch moods.
She took a little longer, needed a couple deep breaths, staring at the dough that just seemed to require a little bit more flour.
"Do you want to get married?" Yet it made sense, he had tried to create a family for himself through parents as a child, it was only natural for him to move on as an adult and eventually consider a lifelong partnership.
"It would be a rapid way to become a member of some influential family, a suitable alternative if I fell from grace in Hans Georg Schuwald eyes. Or that's what I thought." He shrugged. "And it still is the most common choice for an adult life."
As logical as it sounded, she found something utterly wrong in the idea of him marrying someone. The damage he would be willing to cause to a vulnerable woman, turned into a long-term victim of him. Or what was much worse, to potential children.
The last thing she wanted in this life was nephews, raised under his influence, from his blood.
She heard him chuckle once more.
"You look quite troubled, are you scared of gaining a political family because of me?" He wasn't looking at her, instead, he passed the finger through the blade with the excuse of cleaning it, before aiming for the oranges.
"I don't want you to get married..." It was an unpleasant answer, but honest, nonetheless.
"Why?" Once the oranges where peeled he started cutting them so happily, he seemed annoyed.
"I don't want you to ever have children..." She took a pan of one of the drawers, the turning on the stove. Waiting for it to heat she turned towards him. "Please..."
The cycle would just start again and that was the last thing she wanted to think about.
"Don't worry about that." He had also lost all cheerfulness in his voice, yet he wasn't looking at her, for now. Just a brief look. "The survival of this family depends solely on you. I prefer being cautious."
"Cautious...?" Then it was her who wanted him to look back, grabbing his arm like a demanding child.
And he obeyed, turning towards her, with the knife in his hand, yet avoiding any menacing gesture.
"I don't want anyone like me to exist." She dared to breathe again, even if his answer arose more than simple concerns.
"Do you think there is something inherently wrong with you?" She let his arm free in what seemed a caress before focusing on the pan again, placing a portion of the dough.
"Yes." He still avoided looking at her, too focused on a dozen strawberries now that he was handling so carefully.
"Why?" She was actually asking for examples of that natural wickedness of him, yet she only had to remember, how he had never not been a monster, even if it was once a tiny, understandable one.
Just like her. Yet that one that lived in her remained as small as logical, forever in a child stage, while his had evolved into... something else.
"We can talk about the dichotomy of nature and nurture another day." He added, finishing that conversation. "When I'm fully recovered."
Once the strawberries were in the bowl he turned towards her, going back to his casual tone of before, that started with a charming smile.
"What about you? Do you want to eventually get married? Form a family of your own, maybe?" He seemed simply curious.
"I... I don't know... maybe?" She felt completely indifferent to the idea, at least in the abstract. But more importantly. "Would it be OK for you if I did...?"
He offered his most naturally planned smile.
"Of course." Once the fruit was ready, he walked past her towards the professional coffee machine. "I don't plan on meeting them."
"What do you mean?" Was he expecting to be dead by then?
He had to keep eye contact to make sure that his threat was understood.
"I'm interested in you and anything you might be willing to share with me, your own life experiences, but I'll never, under any circumstances, be a part of that life or meet anyone from it: friends, partners or your own children."
"Why?" He was willing to play the person role for himself, but she wasn't even offered a chance. And she was annoyed. She was expecting to find an overbearing brother who thought of her life as his, but instead, the opposite made her felt almost disappointed.
"There is no such thing as a happy ending for us, as twins." He concluded. Nothing they hadn't discussed yet, but she was willing to push, again and again until she was offered some change.
"No, instead we basically live together, planning vacations around the world and having breakfast together in your house. But not as siblings, just as... what exactly?"
"Just as nameless monsters." Who met again after so many towns, castles and names. To find that they were mostly nameless, mostly lost in the middle of a wasteland again with no coordinates to follow. Maybe north, maybe south, their destiny might as well be the same.
She placed another crepe to the growing pile by her side.
"Such a coward reaction. You want to be with me, but you are not willing to do the effort of dealing with anything else that doesn't directly concerns you. Not anymore." Even if the results of his previous attempts had been death and nothing else.
"Do you really want me to?" She wanted her other half back, indeed.
"Yes, I would expect you to extend... this... you are offering me to my own children, if they ever exist."
She would have done anything to understand what his eyes meant in that moment. Yet she just needed to wait.
"No. It starts and ends with you." He turned towards the brewing coffee.
"Why?" She expected her insistence to annoy him. Was counting on it. "How absurd is that?"
Johann laughed, softly. But as her eyes met his she felt haunted by their intensity. And he walked towards her, not stopping until she was trapped between the counters and himself.
"I don't want to meet your potential children, sister, because even if they might not be mine, they will also be. And I don't want to look into their eyes and discover that I can see it, myself, in them." A pause. "You know what I would do next, don't you?"
She held his stare and threats, feeling a maternal instinct for what didn't even live.
"And, if that was the case, if by any chance any of my children happened to me born like you, aren't you exactly the person they would need to meet? The only one capable of offering understanding... safety?"
Whether he had expected such answer he did not show, still he remained silent, pondering her words like they were opening a whole new scenario.
"Wouldn't you," she continued, "right now, be able to stop him from what he's about to become, the child who survived Kinderheim 511? If you were willing to become a protector instead of an executioner...?"
She lost him, completely absorbed in that train of thoughts her words had just triggered, only to come back after a few seconds, suddenly freeing her and walking towards the coffee that was ready now.
"Maybe, who knows." He knew. "I don't remember enough of my own mindset back then to be able to offer an honest answer." He remembered.
He came back to the kitchen table with two mugs, whose delicious smell inundated the room now, and she was setting the table.
Still, he hadn't come back, not completely, and her words had perturbed him enough to deserve more attention than herself.
But she wanted to know, needed to know, even if the knowledge would only make her miserable.
"Can I ask you something? Don't answer if you don't want but... " No lies, not now, not ever.
Johann sat next to the wall, that he used as a backrest as he turned towards her. He certainly knew how to make himself look relaxed. And he waited for her question.
"I know you had Dr. Tenma but..." Johann immediately arched an eyebrow. "Didn't you had anyone... as a child... or even now, someone to look up to...?" A paternal figure of sorts.
But his eye immediate ran away from hers, getting lost in the chaos of fruits he had prepared himself, which then he decided to serve to both.
"No. I've met many people in all these years, of whom I have different opinions and uses. But their impact has always been minimal, considering what you are suggesting." Yet he avoided mentioning the doctor.
"So, you were a feral child..."
Johann seemed caught off guard by her occurrence, needing an instant to compose himself.
He placed an elbow on the table, resting his head over the reverse of the hand. When he looked at her again, he was completely serious, and so close.
"I am a sort of feral child, as I've spent most of my childhood in extreme isolation, almost detached from reality, first in Tři Žáby, with you and mother as the only exception, and afterwards in Kinderheim 511, where all human interaction was extremely hostile." He leaned back. "My first somewhat normal experience was when I joined you in Kinderheim 47, and I was already 10 by then. Same case applies to you, only three years earlier." She took the cup of coffee, and he imitated her. "I had never thought it like that, but you are right."
"I... would like you to tell me more about Kinderheim 511..."
"Why?"
"I want to understand you better..."
He didn't seem convinced.
"And you owe me." She added. "I told you everything about the Red Rose Mansion..."
He seemed to ponder if that was enough reason, which wasn't.
"We can talk about Kinderheim 511 another day." Was he really agreeing or just placating her? "I can even show you the results of my own research about that place. I have it all here, if I remember correctly."
She opened her mouth, too surprised to know what to say. But she rapidly grew concerned.
"Are you sure? I mean... only if it's not too upsetting for you..."
Johann simply stood, going to the fridge to come back with the jam they had forgotten for the crepes.
"I'm actually concerned about how upsetting it might be for you, sister."
"I want to know. I need to know." Yet she might not have sounded as convincing as she wanted. And his concern for her safety, the same Ruhenheim didn't rise, wasn't something she took lightly. "What?"
He seemed... troubled? Was that even possible?
His eyes attacked again.
"Taking into account the fact that you feel affection for me," that was one way to word it, that's for sure, "I would like, in return, to try and be more considerate with you." A pause. "Be kinder, but Kinderheim 511 is no pleasant conversation, especially if it can trigger any emotional response on you." He suddenly remembered to keep eating. "That's why I would suggest you let it go."
A feral child indeed. And tears threatened her at that overwhelming display of naïveté of whom had no experience nor knowledge of even the most basic forms of affection.
Her wet eyes only confused him, even more. And annoyed him, too used to be in control to openly expose vulnerability, or in this case, blatant ignorance.
"That's very kind of you," she conceded, and it was, considering he had already been doing that since the beginning. At least in comparison with what came before. And she sincerely appreciated it. "But you have been doing just fine up until now, no worries about me. In fact, the best thing you can do for me is to try and take care of yourself. Because as you have guessed, whatever happens to you now will have a great effect on me, more than any past deeds I'm made aware of."
"You must really love me if you are satisfied by the bare minimum behavior tolerable, coming from me." He made a grimace, that far from his usual, more mocking ones, showed truly disgust, at her, but mostly at himself.
"No, Johann." Actually, he was right, and she was willing to tolerate more from him than anyone else in the whole world. She had already forgiven him for all he had done, for God's sake, a forgiveness he had done nothing to deserve. "I can understand it's very difficult for you to completely change the way you have behaved your entire life, so I'm willing to give you time to adjust to whatever you want to become, if there's any change you actually want to embrace."
He already had, and his current behavior had little to do with their first encounter. Not in a million years she would have expected hearing him admit he wanted to become 'better' for her.
Tolerance and acceptance. He had already defined her behavior so succinctly many months before but seemed unable to trust it.
"Eat." He had already abandoned the fork. "You are still far from being completely recovered."
After a moment of hesitation, he obeyed and started eating in silence.
"I like your apartment, and your... taste."
Johann's eyes were so bright, so delighted.
"Of course, you like it. It was designed with the sole purpose of agreeing with your aesthetic preferences."
Then it was her to frown. She was never meant to set foot on that place, no?
"Why did you bother in building my ideal apartment?"
"Because you have one, and humans are supposed to have an idea of what they want their homes to look like. So, I took yours." And he had done an astonishing work. Only then she realized how well thought all those details were, the hand painted tiles in the kitchen or that gorgeous chimney in the living room. She was about to congratulate him when his hesitant stare distracted her. "I hope it doesn't bother you."
Was he really asking if she felt betrayed by him making real her ideal sofa arrangement? Was that something he worried about?
She smiled.
"It doesn't bother me in the slightest, what bothers me is that you are not using it." He had enough, leaving the fork for good on the table and the meal unfinished. "I mean... the more you tell me about yourself the more amazed I am that, despite it all, you were able to keep that focus of yours, and keep making plans. Nothing seems capable of stopping you." The damage was already done, so might as well ask what she wanted directly. "Is your ambition really gone... completely? Isn't there anything you might still want to do?" Something non-criminal.
Nothing like a cup of coffee to entertain her hands and hide her restlessness.
He leaned back, like requiring a new perspective of her.
"Are you asking me whether your declaration of love has moved me enough to want to live? Whether I might feel like doing something with my life now?"
"No, not only..." she shrugged, knowing from the beginning that he would not answer without being satisfied with hers first. "But... I want to ask you... what do you think...?"
The hardness of his eyes completely dissipated, and instead of her the meal became interesting suddenly.
"I'm still processing that information, as the level of self-destructiveness and irrationality entailed are too complex for me fully understand the position you are in. I'm trying to be cautious." He drank of his coffee. "But at the same time, you now make much more sense. I finally understand why you were willing to bring me back to your life, even when in the middle of building a new one."
"Emotions aren't supposed to make sense..." She attacked, she did, feeling slightly hurt for the words she was perfectly expecting.
"Aren't you supposed to at least try and manage them accordingly to your own needs, though?" Said the man with zero emotional intelligence. His neutral tone didn't help one bit in making her feel less judged. But he wasn't done, he never was. "Still, I'm your brother, even with all my misdeeds I've acted like one, at some point, so your love is rooted in something real. Therefore, I'm responsible for those feelings."
"It's not your fault..." But he didn't care.
"Why do you forgive me?" He concluded, lethal. "What sense does it make now?"
Such direct question caught her off guard, even if she had been expecting an interrogatory about love and forgiveness since the moment, she had worded them.
"Because forgiving you was the most natural conclusion to my own personal journey..." One she pretended that it had finished in Ruhenheim. "And because..." Johann might obliterate her for her next words. "I think... you needed to hear it... and the sole reason why you are still alive..." She took a deep breath, even when it was too late. "It reached you, no?" He seemed to find her suggestion quite amusing. So predictable.
"It was unexpectedly enlightening." She frowned and he delivered. "I assumed that your interactions with me, as adults, were purely based on revenge and anger, that your forgiveness was purely a moral choice, not a feeling. I was wrong. You forgave me because you have always loved me, and you finally gave up. In fact, you have never properly tried to kill me because you had already realized then, on that rainy night in Düsseldorf, how much you loved me. Your amnesia might have been fueled by your desire to escape me, but the truth is that you were, above all, trying to escape yourself. You might have even feared me, but in the end, I was just collateral damage."
Was it, fear of becoming just him what made her hand tremble every time the cannon was directed towards him?
"So maybe", he continued, merciless, "it wasn't your forgiveness what I needed to hear, but instead it would have sufficed if I had forgiven you."
His expressions gave up nothing, as usual. She could do nothing but hope he was honest.
"Do you want me to apologize now, for everything?" He almost felt teasing.
And she had to deviate her eyes to the wall behind. Would an apology mean anything to her, now, one that he probably didn't even feel?
When her eyes returned to him, they were challenging.
"I'm sure you can sound extremely convincing, but no, I don't want any apologies from you."
So he delivered anyways, as his eyes locked her in, trapped.
"I'm sorry for all the violence I've created around you, during all our lives, and I'm sorry for all the pain and fear that you have to endure because of my very existence." She felt a lump in her throat, already the tears threatening her, shamelessly, so she bit her lip in an attempt to stop them. "And I'm sorry that I've become such a wicked creature that is unable to stop it all, unable to offer you something back, worth of your love and forgiveness. And I'm also sorry I'm not even capable of putting a solution, for good, so that at the very least you can just move on and start anew."
Just flawless. Johann had not only learned how to play the perfect human but eventually the perfect monster too, and after all those months he had mastered the combination of emotion and detachment that she found so genuine. He probably found her quite amusing.
She dried her eyes, feeling so pathetic that his empty words could evoke such an emotional reaction, while his gesture then had something of triumphal. If only he had realized before how much of an empathetic monster he could be, he might have ruled the world.
"Are you really sorry?" Was he going to use the same excuse than with the Lieberts, that emotion had make of him a less rational monster?
"No." Such childish enthusiasm. "I agree with all I've said, though, on an intellectual level. But I'm not sure if that's enough to consider my apology genuine." Why did she had to ask.
Yet he had offered his own life as sacrifice that night, and he will keep offering it to placate her if necessary. He was willing to accept her punishment, any punishment at all. If it made her any happier.
She shrugged, increasingly uncomfortable with that bulldozing honesty of his. Thus, she offered her own.
"I just want to move on, leave the past behind and..." She finally looked at him. That was her idea of happiness. "And I want you to move on too."
"I'm that past you want to leave behind." He almost snapped.
"No... maybe what you represent..." She frowned, wondering what her words even meant. "But not you."
But was there anything left beyond the idea of 'Johann'?
He knew.
"I am the personification of your own darkness, one you can put a face to, if your own, a voice. Just as you are my light, my anchor to a reality I'm too detached of. For lack of better terms." A smirk crossed his face, as sometimes his linguistic skills reached their limits. "Now you are struggling, realizing that this idea doesn't fully comply with what you have found behind the façade, a broken doll made out of flesh and blood."
She nodded. She had struggled way too long to separate the myth from the man, even if she had been close to know the man from the very beginning.
"And you need this dichotomy to disappear, either by me becoming the myth again or destroying it. The former is no longer an option, or better a short-lived one, as you'll kill me as soon as you find out. Then, my only way out is the latter..." Only then his mask seemed to crack, and an amused appeared in his face as the most childish smirk. "Redemption."
Johann didn't deserve redemption.
Even is she wanted him to find peace, happiness even...
"Is this a game for you!?" Life was, after all.
His eyes left her, looking at his own cup.
"Do you really want me to answer that question?"
"Actually, yes." Not exactly. "I do want to know what you think about it, all of it." She suddenly stood, not that she wanted to go anywhere, she just needed to move. "Love, forgiveness, redemption..."
If she wanted his attention, now she had it.
'There is hell in the eyes of a living human being.'
And now the demons came out to hunt her.
He decided then to also stand, almost chuckling as she made a step back without even realizing. "Let's talk about redemption." Like the conversation didn't go with him, he offered his attention to the dirty dishes, that so gently he pilled along with the cutlery.
"Y-yes..." The leap of faith was done, now all she had left was to save the impact as gracefully as he left her.
With the sink on her back, Johann passed by her side with the load. Not moving one bit, she heard them landing on the bottom.
She took the mugs, following his detached example turning around to find him waiting for her, taking them from her hands, repeating the same process until they were safe from their upcoming anger.
"You don't deserve redemption."
"I know."
"You have never tried to, not even pretended becoming a better person..." It was a wild assumption about someone she had barely seen by then. "Not until moments ago." When he had simply worded a desire of being more considerate, with her and no one else. "Why?"
He frowned, surprised by the question.
"Why should moral righteousness be assumed as a life goal?"
Again, he was dodging.
"Because that's been your first reaction. You want to correspond me. To be kinder, more considerate, just because I have some emotional attachment with you, one you didn't know until now.
"My reaction it's only a reflection of your own desires and my personal attempt to decrease the damaging effects of my presence in your life." A perfectly scripted answer.
"Then, we can say that you are just trying to please me... with what you think I want."
"Yes."
"But why?" Was she losing him with that train of thoughts. "Why do you even care about pleasing me, at all? Because I don't understand is why your response isn't the most bulldozing indifference." She had to take her eyes away and recollect her thoughts. "Same in Ruhenheim... you felt something at my forgiveness, something profound and surely devastating for you... but I don't understand what, nor why."
Johann simply sighted, apparently exasperated.
"Because even if I can't identify it, I might be able to feel, something, sometimes... even love." He remained apathetic, until his expression cracked on a smile. "Or maybe I am, as you so bluntly described, an arrogant bastard, and even subconsciously, I play our relationship as a chess game and all I've been doing until now is reacting to you in the most efficient manner."
It didn't pass her how her hands went to his back, in that mannerism that was so him.
"But those answers won't satisfy you, nor they should." He continued, raising his voice, and even if it was only a little it was able to startle her, "But the truth is, as pathetic as it might sound, that I simply don't know. As I've never known. And that's one of the first things I had to learn by myself, that I'm somehow different and therefore any law applicable to humans may or may not work with me. Of course, I know I'm not special, and I probably have hundreds or even thousands of kindred spirits roaming through Earth as we speak, yet in practice I might as well be an extraterrestrial being, dropped here for fun. So, I've had to learn by myself, through trial and error, how to be human, or at the very least appear as one. But deep down I don't really know what I'm doing, what I'm aiming to or waiting for or even hoping for. It's just barren land, in any direction. It's always been, so I'm left wondering whether I've ever truly awakened, or I've just been left for good in that basement." He opened his mouth but refrained in talking, focusing instead on her again and a silent stare that was better attack than any words could. And then they came, as he placed both hands in the chair rest, clearly looking for some support. "You want me to seek redemption and I might even be content with that future, but what exactly is redemption supposed to mean? Is it a feeling, a peace of mind I'm supposed to achieve when I reach certain distance with my past self? A matter of thought where I just stop thinking the way I think? Because in that case I've already failed and it's not even worth considering. However, I might have more luck if I redeem myself by acts? Is it enough to stop hurting and destroying? I can do that, I'm in fact doing that, but I might as well slip to my old habits the second they become useful again, and that can happen the moment I stop this self-imposed isolation." A pause. "What is redemption, sister? What does it mean to you? And what it is supposed to mean to me, not knowing where I stand nor where is the end line?"
Nina had listened to his rant with uttermost attention, astonished that the best way to trigger his honesty was simple, concrete questions. Plus, a little insistence.
The fact that he was still feverish might have as well helped a little.
"Redemption is not about you changing your thoughts or acts." It was the most honest answer. "I'm still surprised by how capable you are of having consistently changed your behavior as soon as I told you so and sustain that change during months, probably years, with minor lapses. Yet that change is basically meaningless when your motivations are that shallow. Redemption is about inner reflection, realizing the immense damage you have caused to hundreds of people and realizing that the same way you made your choices back then, you wouldn't do the same now even if the circumstances where the same." Did her words make any sense at all? "You are an extremely damaged individual but also an extremely aware one, so if you are not capable of finding any issue with the mindset you have been dragging your entire life, don't even bother now. Redemption is out of your reach." Yet she could trip him into feeling something for that failure, if possible.
Johann simple arched an eyebrow, instead wondering where that conversation was supposed to be going.
"But then, there is a fundamental thing about you I don't understand..." She might have accused him of weakness numerous times by now, but that didn't mean she felt safe with actually pointing said weakness. "Why are you so tormented...? And what exactly is tormenting you... if it's not sadness, nor fear... neither solitude." He had stated in the past, not that she believed him one bit.
His hands abandoned any support before turning around leaving the room without a second thought.
Damn coward.
... one that was sick and wounded... and now upset. And all of them because of her.
"... Johann! Wait!" It didn't take much to catch up with him on the corridor. He simply ignored her until he reached what seemed his objective, the door that had never been opened, not during those long days. The only one with a keyhole, that only then she discovered had been opened the whole time.
Johann opened, entering without hesitation only to step right, standing beside the door.
Once might have been designed as a library, but now it appeared more as a storage room, as shelves and boxes and dossiers covered any centimeter free, with the only exception of a couple armchairs and a table in a corner.
"... what is this?"
"I've been thinking a lot during the last days, about your love, your forgiveness... but also about your frustration, as you have been so willing to learn anything you can about me and I've just denied you any valuable information, most of the time. Just as I did when we were children." At least he agreed on that. "It's not fair. So I want to propose you something."
Forgetting for a moment her surroundings, Nina derived her attention to that man standing next to her.
"I'm all ears."
"Here you can find anything that is to learn about me, from psychiatric evaluations I undertook in Kinderheim 511 to my own writings. Every single piece of paper is about me, and nothing else." She turned around again, trying to guess how many documents were there, but surely hundreds if not thousands.
"You didn't destroy everything after all..."
Johann tilted his head, apologizing for what he might consider an insignificant lie.
"You are free to check all of it, if that's what you want."
Her excitement was no joke, realizing that in a few days she would obtain more than in the last year.
But then she realized.
"And what are you expecting in return...?"
He simply shrugged.
"The only way I see myself is through you. So, if I really want to know about myself..." His half smile didn't seem to believe that. "And for that I have to give you unlimited access to me, and that's what I'm doing."
"Are you sure?" She was asking about everything.
"No, I'm not, but you are, and that's what's important."
And without expecting an answer he left.