The Distant Heart

Note/Warnings: Non-graphic death scene.
Summary:Twin brothers are both after the same treasure: one to protect it, the other to destroy it. The question is: How far will they go to possess it?


“Did you really think it would be this easy, brother?” a voice called in slightly antiquated German, over sweet trills of birdsong.

Florian Müeller grunted as he let the boulder, which had been huge and heavy, even for him—and which had, in the end, covered nothing but a shallow hole, empty of everything, save the now matted, filthy cloth in which the box had been wrapped—fall back to the loamy earth with a hollow BOOM.

“You know, Johann, I had hoped it might be,” he replied cavalierly in matching German, turning to face his long-lost twin across the small, idyllic glade. Even after all these years, looking at Johann was like looking in a mirror: the same narrow face and dark hair, silvering at temples and widow’s peak; the same pale blue eyes, wide and wide-set, made all the more brilliant for being the centerpiece of an olive-toned face; and the same thin, unforgiving mouth made mobile by the slight upward curve, as if a smile wasn’t far off. Or even a laugh.

Though, of the two of them, Johann had always been more ready to laugh than Florian: the Müeller brothers had always been identical in looks, but far from similar in personality.

Next to Florian’s brother, in a patch of dappled, green-gold sunlight, stood a young man of average height and build, with waving auburn hair and an angel’s face . . . despite that face being contorted in a rictus of fright. He, like Florian’s brother, wore camouflage from head to foot. Quite unnecessary, as Florian had never been the woodsman Johann had always been, and thus would never have heard or seen them coming till they wanted him to.

No, Florian’s tastes had always run to the studious and esoteric—to things which could only be taught or learned by a small few, and usually in clandestine places as different from natural as it was possible to be.

If only, Florian had freely admitted to Johann, once upon a century, to understand the nature of his—of their continued existence.

But now was the time for neither conjecture nor reunion. Florian put his hands in his pockets, and rocked back and forth on heel and toe as he and Johann—and Johann’s companion—took each other’s measure.

“Where is the heart, Johann?” Florian finally asked, still in German, his voice barely carrying across the distance that separated them. Johann smiled and held out his hands peaceably.

“Don’t let’s start things off on such a . . . terse and businesslike note, Florian,” Johann said, this time in accentless English. His smile was bright and meaningless, like a movie star’s. “It’s been the better part of a century since we’ve seen each other. I’ve missed—”

“I do not wish to reminisce or catch-up, Johann.” Florian paused, then switched to English, as well. “I want the heart.”

Johann sighed and glanced at his companion, who visibly swallowed and was, a moment later, holding a pistol which was pointed at Florian, who merely laughed and shook his head.

“You know what I am, yes?” he asked the boy, who nodded once, his pistol-hand shaking ever so slightly. “What we both are?”

“Yes.” The boy nodded again, taking a moment to glance at Johann, and when he did, Florian removed his hands from his pockets quickly, to reveal his own small-caliber pistol, which he aimed at the boy’s head.

“Drop your weapon, child, or I’ll put one right between your eyes,” he said flatly as the boy’s gaze ticked back to him. Johann tsked and laughed.

“Don’t listen to him, Sean, he’s bluffing.”

Florian smiled and cocked the trigger slightly. “I’m really not.”

Johann snorted. “You don’t have it in you to kill. You never have.”

“A lot can change in ninety-three years, Johann. In six hundred years.”

“And a lot can stay the same, Florian.”

Florian’s eyes narrowed and his mouth pursed. “I mean business, brother. Give me the heart or I’ll kill your little friend.”

“If you so much as twitch, Sean will put a bullet in your gut,” Johann said, stepping back slightly, and closer to a grim-faced Sean. “It won’t kill you, of course, but it’ll damn sure stop you. Painfully, too.”

Florian smiled mirthlessly. “I’ve been gut-shot before, Johann. It didn’t stop me from killing the bastard who did it.”

Johann shook his head. “Even now, Florian, you wouldn’t kill an innocent.”

“He’s an associate of yours, Johann. I highly doubt he’s an innocent.”

“Compared to us? He’s as pure as the driven snow—well . . . maybe not quite that pure,” Johann said, his eyes half-lidded, his lips curved in a suggestive smirk. Next to him, the boy, Sean, colored fiercely.

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here, Johnny!” he bit out in a clipped Irish lilt. He scowled at Florian. “We’re equals, remember?”

“Of course, darling, of course,” Johann said, just short of condescendingly, but rather fondly. He reached out to run his hand over Sean’s fiery hair, his gaze never leaving Florian. “I’ve put the heart where you can’t get at it, brother. For both our sakes. It hasn’t been here since 1935.”

Shaking his head, Florian finally lowered his gun, his shoulders slumping hopelessly. “I’m tired, Johann. Aren’t you tired?”

“Sometimes,” Johann admitted lowly, shrugging as if exhaustion was of no moment. “And lonely. But the fatigue . . . it passes. I find another project to spend my immortality on—or another pretty face,” he added, his once more fond glance lighting on Sean. “I distract myself until I’m energized, once more.”

“Well, I’ve lost the knack of that, brother. I haven’t been alive in over a century. I’m merely surviving,” Florian said softly, and Johann winced.

“You’ll learn to love life again, Florian. Or you won’t. But I will never stop loving it. Not enough to tell you where the heart is. Not enough to die with you.”

“But the heart belongs to us both, Johann.” Florian blinked, and tears ran down his face as he brought his free hand up to his empty, still chest. “Six hundred and eighty years ago, we were born conjoined at that same heart and lived that way for the first two years of our lives! The heart is as much mine as it is yours!”

“Yes, it is.” Johann nodded solemnly. “But the witch who split us in twain, and enchanted the heart we once shared, decreed that if the heart were to ever be destroyed, we would both die. I cannot let that happen. Not even for you. Not even to let you rest, Florian.”

“But I want to die, Johann,” Florian insisted, clutching his silent chest. “I’ve wanted to die longer than I can bear to think about!”

“And I want to live—that will never change.” Johann said simply, but implacably. A look of fury contorted Florian’s face, mottling it red under its olive complexion.

“Perhaps it will if I take away that which makes this awful life worth living for you, eh?” he brought his pistol up again, pointed it at Sean, who blinked in surprise and fired at the same time Florian did, his eyes wide.

A moment later, two bodies tumbled to the ground, one with a hole between its eyes, the other with a gushing hole in its gut.

Johann, shocked and unscathed, looked from body to body in the silence broken only by the echo of the simultaneous shots, his gaze lingering longest on the body next to him. Lingering on the smoking hole in Sean’s head.

Finally, he knelt slowly, wiping impatiently at his blurry eyes, and closed Sean’s blue-green ones before leaning down to kiss each pale lid, then Sean’s ashen, cooling lips. “Auf wiedersehen, meine taube. . . .”

Then, sighing, he stood and turned away from the body. He marched dutifully over to his moaning, incapacitated twin. Florian was clutching his gut and trying weakly to sit up.

Johann knelt and hushed his brother, who whimpered, his eyes rolling up into his head as blood leaked through his fingers, from behind his incarnadined hand and perforated gut. Johann made a soft sound of concern.

“Do not worry, Florian,” he said in German, once more. “I will still take care of you. Once again, you will be the person I live for.”

Florian moaned again. “Johann. . . .”

“Be still, brother.”

A few moments later, his unconscious brother in his arms, Johann Müeller strode out of the idyllic glade forever. A few moments after that, the first wary bird sent a tentative trill into the sunlit air. Another bird responded with equal temerity.

Several minutes later, the glade was alive with birdsong that didn’t so much as falter at the distant din of a sleek, silver BMW Z4 Roadster speeding off down the lonely Bundesautobahn.

END