Twins and Apple Strudels

By Aldrae

Summary: Three years after his escape, Johan pays his sister a visit.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but an unfortunately vivid and slightly perverted imagination.

Warnings: Strong incestuous overtones. Please do not read this if you cannot take it.

Rating: If you are old enough to watch the anime, you are old enough to read this story.

Authors Notes: This story comes in three parts. I originally intended it to be a one shot, but after thinking about it, I felt a one shot would not do this story justice.

I have tried to keep the twins in character… but you are the best judge of whether they are or not. Please forgive any OOCness; Johan is an extremely difficult character to write.

The quote marked with an (*) is from the Scarlet Pimpernel. For some reason, while I watched the anime, I remembered it and thought it described Johan and Nina quite well.

All other quotes are from the Manga itself.

Hopefully, the other parts will be uploaded soon.

Reviews Help!

Enjoy :)

Part One: Twins.

Nina's thoughts on her brother

Nina knew that Johan loved her.

She had always known this.

She also knew that it was not a normal sort of love. It was not the sort of love an older brother was generally supposed to have for his little sister. But it was not exactly the passionate love of a man for his woman either. They were not just a brother and a sister. They were not just a man and a woman. Long ago, when they were children, they were everything to each other. They had had to be.

"He was my little father, and, I his tiny mother.

We loved each other so." *

Each was the other's parent, and the other's child. And on top of that, each had been the other's protector, confidant, and most trusted person. Johan had been her best friend. She had been his only friend. They had grown up together for the most part, eaten food from the same plate, laughed, cried, played and slept together, usually huddled as close as possible for warmth. He'd bathed and clothed her countless times when she was sick, and she had done the same for him. He had killed for her, stolen food and clothing to keep them both alive. He had taught her how to fire a gun, how to kill, in order to protect herself as they slipped past the guards at the Czechoslovakian border.

She had had no one but him; he had had no one but her.

And they were both scared, traumatized little children struggling to survive in a harsh world that neither of them fully understood. It was a world that bred monsters inside both of them.

But Johan's monster had always been stronger.

As close together as the twins were, there were parts of Johan that Nina had never truly understood. Johan was her twin, but he had grown up so much faster than she.

He had hated being helpless. To him, childhood was helplessness.

Johan had never been one to show much emotion. The only thing she knew that could hurt him enough to make him cry was when he failed, in some way, to protect her.

But she had not realized just how much he had resented his helplessness until that terrible night at the Lieberts.

She'd stared, horrified, at the crumpled corpses lying in pools of their own blood, and at her pale, slender ten year old brother, standing in the closet with a gun in his hand.

He had refused to meet her eyes.

"Today was different. Today, a monster came"

It was then she began to understand the darkness inside him.

Every family that took them in, that showed them love, and that cared for or protected them, merely underlined his sense of failure, of impotence, of his inability to protect that other most precious part of himself. He did not want parents or guardians. He was not really interested in anything. He had no particular goals, no particular attachments, and no particular aspirations. Murder and random destruction were merely things to pass the time, rather than ends in and of themselves. There was only one thing he had truly wanted.

Nina.

She was the only family he would ever recognize. It was absolutely unacceptable to him that anyone else would ever presume to come between the two of them, and dare to call themselves his family.

And so he'd murdered every single one who tried.

But the Lieberts were different. He had not intended to kill them… at least not when he did. If everything had gone according to his plans, Nina would never have known. He would have kept it from her just as he made sure she had never found out about the others. Franz Bonaparte had visited, and the sight of the man triggered Johan's rage. The boy could not control his hatred, his anger and his fear until it was far too late.

For the first time, Nina had seen her brother without his mask.

She saw how sad, how hurt, how twisted and sick he truly was.

He had become her enemy then, because for the first time, she could see the monster in him, the thing even he wanted her to destroy.

But she still loved him.

And he loved her. He always loved her.

Even now, he still loved her.

It showed so blatantly in the way he looked at her.

The existence of this emotion did nothing to diminish the terror she felt, because she knew, more than anyone, what a terrible thing his love was.

And he was back, looking at her with eyes that stripped and isolated her. They laid her completely bare before him. To say that his gaze made her uncomfortable was an understatement bordering on criminal.

That look was torment to every part of her. It hurt the little child in her… the part of her that was Johan's daughter, to see her beloved protector in such painful need. It hurt the mother in her to watch her child suffer while she was completely unable to help him, it made the naive little girl who looked up to her brother want to cry because she knew she was the one who hurt him. It made the woman in her cringe because he was her brother… and that level of need, sexual or not, was just… wrong.

The look filled her with guilt, and sadness, and fear and disgust.

But she could not deny that that look drew a sharp, instinctive response from the vicious predator that lived inside her. The monster that had scornfully told Dr Gillen; "I am not Nina" before attempting to strangle him.

The monster she was struggling very hard to destroy.

This monster's response was shamefully, undeniably sexual.

It was something that never ceased to astound her; the fact that that all her brother had to do was look at her in this way, and regardless of whatever mental conflict she was going through, she would immediately become wet.

…like she was right now.

The most mortifying thing about it was that this reaction could only be triggered by Johan. No other man had ever caused this immediate, visceral response to his mere presence.

Even Tenma had not managed to achieve this, and he was the one she was very much in love with.

Or maybe she was just a perverted freak, getting off on her own terror.

It was, she mused, probably a good thing that Johan did not know this.

But then again, he was Johan. She doubted there was anything about her that he did not know. It was, after all, the same sickness inside them both, the same depraved, twisted, murderous insanity that fed their respective monsters.

It was safer for her to assume that he knew but had chosen not to act on that knowledge.

Johan would never touch her without her consent.

This was something to be grateful for. She knew how powerful her monster was, and how weak her defenses were against it. She knew she would fall very fast if Johan ever took it into his head to make a move.

Incest, was it?

The elements were certainly there. But that theory was far too simple, too small to cover the entire scope of what was happening between them.

It was not incest. It was something considerably worse... and infinitely more sordid.

Johan just could not separate her from himself.

"You are me and I am you"

It was not just about sexual desire. Johan had always looked at her in that hungry, covetous way, even when they were tiny four year olds with no concept of an adult love. And that look never changed. It remained the same when they were ragged, starving runaways, relying only on their wits and on each other to survive. It was the same even after Kinderhiem 511.

"They are all yours too…"

"How are they mine?"

"Everything just is."

This love of Johan's, she decided, was an odd sort of love… peculiar, difficult, incomprehensible, immense, frightening and strange; rather like the man who owned it.

And it was quite frankly terrifying to be the object of such love.

"…I was born to smother you with flowers."

Such dangerously blind adoration…

It was incredibly complicated, but amazingly simple at the same time.

"Once he knows you are here, he will definitely show up… because he needs you."

She was a complete idiot not to have remembered this, when even a murderous fanatic with a one track mind like Professor Göderich had seen it.

In the past, Johan had never stayed away from her for too long.

It was, it seemed, impossible for them to remain separated forever.

After the Red Rose Mansion, after Kinderhiem, after his murder of the Lieberts, after his first Surgery, after the years spent apart as teenagers, after the Fortners, after each killing spree was done, he always came back for her.

Anytime she found new parents, new friends, a new home, he would deliberately destroy everything, and drag her back to him.

She had put a bullet in his brain, and after he had recovered, she had screamed and fled at the sight of him, causing enough pain to wring tears from the heartless monster they both knew that he was. She had deliberately chosen to forget him, and then sought to end his life when he forced her to remember, she rejected the bloodstained throne he spent his teenage years building for her, and made it clear that she wanted his death instead. And so he had plotted the destruction of the entire village of Runenhiem in his heartbroken quest for self destruction.

And yet, here he was.

She realized it now. No matter how far or fast she fled from him, no matter where she hid herself, he would always come after her, trailing death in his wake.

She was his 'other half' when all was said and done.

And he could not live without her.

As long as he was still alive, as long as he could move or even breathe, he would always find her.

It was as simple as that.

So she realized how foolish she had been not to have understood that her brother would inevitably return.

Only fools did not learn from the past.

And absorbing herself in her new job with the firm, immersing herself in her new, boring, but blessedly safe life, she had allowed herself to believe she was free, to let her guard down, to become careless, to become a fool.

It had been three years since he had vanished, had it not? She had convinced herself that there was no reason to be afraid. He was on the run. He was no longer the nameless unacknowledged terror he had been in the past, but a notorious fugitive. He surely would not be foolish enough to return.

And the sad thing was she only realized the extent of her folly when she returned from work that Friday evening.

It was with a deep sigh of relief that she had unlocked the door and let herself into her tiny one bedroom apartment. She was exhausted, hungry, her feet were killing her and all she had wanted was a nice warm bath, some food and as much sleep as she could get.

But it was not her destiny to have those things that day.

As soon as she had walked into the apartment, she sensed him.

She froze.

And then her heart began a slow burning crawl into her throat.

She had turned, very slowly.

He was dressed in his usual way, steel grey, well cut jacket over a navy blue button down shirt. His trousers immaculately ironed, his black shoes beautifully polished, and without a speck of dust. His hair was very neatly combed, and not a single blond strand was out of place.

"Hello Anna"

His voice was very soft.

"Welcome home."

He smiled.

She promptly keeled over.

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Well this is it for the first part.

Thank you for reading. Please review, and let me know what you think.

Criticism is welcome, as long as it is constructive.

Hopefully, the next part will be uploaded soon.