A Place In The Sun

By Mona Kleine

Disclaimer: The story, characters and concepts all belong to Naoki Urasawa sensei.

Warnings: Character death and the incestuous theme.

Summary:

Johan finally returned for Nina. Unfortunately, a year after his secret comeback, he was discovered by the polices.

Well... sometimes you wonder how a monster's last moment feels like?

Maybe it felt the same. Maybe it wasn't so different from any one of us.

Prologue:

"Someday I'll find a way to shine

Leave all these rainy days behind

I know there's got to be

Some place warm and bright for me

I'm running out of places I can run

Looking for a place in the sun"

-Tim McGraw-

*Johann's POV*

Have you ever felt like an actor up on a stage filled by masses of lights at the very final ending?

Right now, that would make perfect sense to me. The smell of hard concrete ground where I lied, the burning sensation of fresh blood, the surrounding police lights. Everything was amusingly dramatic.

Justice won. The villain died. Just an ideal finale.

Inspector Lunge stood there, outside the interlacing police lines. The rest was history. I nonchalantly smiled at him. He replied with a confounded gaze. The crowd was full of chatters.

All but one!

Anna was screaming.

I shifted my numb irises to see her clearer, out of all those flashing lights and crowd noises. They held her back, telling her not to come close to me. She's struggling to break free and squealing helplessly.

At last, they let her go. Her slender figure darted to my side like a flash of light, as if she was running for her life.

She's crying.

Though my vision's fading, I knew her lovely face was full of tears. She clenched her lips so hard. I've seen that similar sight of her so many times. The time she heard a sad story, the time she shrieked because of a creepy cockroach, or that time when she held the gun pointing at me... Her face was full of tears.

I want to shed them away.

She used to be so prone to get all excited and cheery. Back to the time we were still toddlers, whenever I read her a bed time story, she'd whisper how much she loved me. That time when we reunited at her orphanage together with the Lieberts and not long ago when I held her in my arms... She was beaming so bright for me!

I want to see it again.

My right arm, which I thought of no control, instinctively reached out for her tears-stained face.

Oh God, she's still a thousand times beautiful even when she cried!

She's nothing like me. I'd swear. Only the fools would assume that we had the same face. Those sky-blue eyes that shone with hopes and determinations. Those full and ripe lips that stubbornly curved upwards whenever she's angry and bloomed like berries when she smiled.

She's the real existence and I am a fake. I wore an ostensibly perfect face that looks like hers. Nothing comes underneath it but an abyss of hollowness. I desired the end of the world? Lie. Back then, I desired nothing. Nothing but death. I never wanted to live, yet I woke up seeing her without any memories.

Then I remembered... my world had ended long time ago when I asked her to point the gun at me.

I didn't know when exactly she took over and I gave in. She told me she'd forgive me even if we were the only two in the whole world. I broke her heart, her life, her everything. If the price was my life, so be it. I never cared to keep it anyway.

The second time waking up in the hospital was when things started to tumble down. Pathetically. All I could think of was her very last words of forgiveness. Somehow I wanted more and my greed was always monstrous. So I came back for her and made the worst mistake. Devils know I didn't just want her forgiveness.

I wanted her. Her smiles, her lovely voice, her kind and sparkling eyes. All of her and the pieces of sweet heaven she brought me. It's impossible not to want her!

...

Little sister.

I've seen the end so many times, over and over. It meant nothing than a trivial game of screwing with ants, line after line. Kindeheim 511, then Ruhenheim... Nevertheless, you wanted me to start over. A new ending that you told me about...

What is true fear?

I'm a non-existent being, a monster with no true identity. If I'm gonna die, I'd take the rest of the world with me.

That's what I do. Or so I thought?

Right now, I'm unsure how I felt... Fear?... A monster fears death for the first time in its life? I fought back an urge of wanting to chuckle hysterically. Irony. This must be how Franz Bonaparta felt back then.

Anna!

She's dazed in astonishment as the tips of my fingers touched her face. She squeezed my hand in hers. So warm... I whispered something and my own ears didn't figure out what it was.

Anna heard it.

Her slender hand run up stroking my frosty face, fondled the strand of hair falling on my forehead. She pressed her soft lips on mine and my eyes gradually shut off.

Fragments of childhood memories rushed back like a hurricane eating up the rest of my consciousness. At that moment, the remaining senses in me broke free. Unfettered and light. I found myself reversed to my boyhood form, standing two meters away, gazing at both of us. Anna pulled my blood-spattered body into her embrace and trembled non-stop. It seems like she called out my name. But I couldn't hear it...

My name?

It doesn't matter anymore.

I love you.

*Nina's POV*

He whispered those words to me and his burning throats wouldn't let him say it right.

Doesn't matter. I'd memorize them with all my soul.

His three very last words.

My shattered heart felt like jumping out. I reflexively leaned in, with the last stroke of my strength, planted a kiss on his pretty but now very pale lips.

Elder brother, this is my answer!

When I finally pulled back, he could no longer look at me. His beautiful eyelashes had intertwined to each other.

"Johann." My quivering arms held him even impossibly closer... until they're numb in pain.

Blood started coming out from my clasped lips. "Johann, please..."

Kneeling there in silence, I held onto him, feeling his breath gradually wore thin. My swollen eyes freeze in cold mist until they drained out and half-blinded. I reluctantly shut them off.

Isn't this the ending I wished for 3 years ago when I was chasing after him?

This would make no sense if I was still the same person like back then.

These twisted feelings are forbidden. And I thought I'd never tell him until the end.

But right now… God, I beg you to forgive us.

Just for now!

...

As my senses drifted away, I felt someone's arms on my shoulders, lifted my frozen body and carried me away.

Then there's no more.

...

I love you.

I know!

Authors Notes:

This is originally an ending I prepared for my previous story "Tears and Roses".

But it wasn't easy having to kill Johann. So I decided not to put into the story and ended up posting it as a one-shot.

Lemme know whatcha think :D