Author's Note: Please be forewarned that this story contains heavily implied incest.

"Jack! Jack!" Five-year-old me cried out, sobbing violently as a mean six-year-old Kai stole my drawing of our dog, Cream.

"What is it, Claire?! Is someone bullying you again?" You dashed down from the mountaintop, where you had previously been picking Moondrop flowers, down to outside Gotz's house, where I was desperately trying to reclaim my poorly done piece of artwork.

"Jack's not coming, Claire! It's mine now!" Kai exclaimed in absolute glee, tormenting me.

"Kai, give it back to her right now!" You cried, stomping up to him furiously.

"Make me!"

Without a second of hesitation, you swung your fist right into his jaw. Flesh met flesh. All at once, Kai doubled over. Deep, murky, glistening blood dripped out of his mouth.

I cried. Sprinting towards you, I grabbed onto your arm and took a step behind you, letting your shoulders act as a barrier between Kai and me.

"I'm scared, Jack…" I whimpered uselessly, tears of fear dripping down my face. You gestured for me to move even further behind you, keeping me close by holding my hand. I gripped on for dear life.

"Don't worry, Claire! I'll always protect you!"

You might have only been six years old, and you might have only stood at three feet five, but you were my hero.

My big brother.

Our parents heard my screams, and they came just in time to prevent Kai from retaliating. They punished you by locking you in our barn for two weeks, and I cried for two weeks because I couldn't see you. Our shared bed was a void without you.

I had nightmares. I dreamt that I would never see you again; that the next time Kai teased me there would be no one to protect me. I dreamt that you died. I dreamt that I died in your place and went to Heaven to be an angel. I dreamt that I cried for an eternity because I couldn't be with you. My best friend, my big brother, my hero. I dreamt the angels in Heaven banished me back to Earth, because my crying drove them insane. And I cried for an eternity as well, but I cried for joy, because I could be with you again. My protector, my soul mate, my spirit.

You were my whole life.

Were. The mere thought of having to use that word to describe you used to make me want to lunge for the axe lying across the room, and plunge it into my half heart.

Half heart.

I call it that because that's what it is. We weren't just siblings, or best friends, or two people who cared with all their souls for one another. We were one. You were me and I was you. I like to believe that's the reason for why we were the way we were. It wasn't in our control. If God created the world, then He decided to make us from the same heart. We might have been two separate bodies, but our hearts and souls were one.

Without you, all I have is a half heart.

We used to sleep with our backs together, almost like we were trying to protect one another from the evil that was the world.

Mom and Dad always teased that we were inseparable. We would laugh because we knew, deep down in our shared soul, that that was the truth.

Mom and Dad were a mess. Dad had a penchant for drinking too much, and Mom liked to cry over the disorder that was her life. We loved taking to Mother's Hill and playing in the flower fields when Dad hit one drink too many. We used to play house – you were the Dad and I was the Mom, and you never drank and I never cried. We created the family we didn't have. You were all the family I needed. You were all I needed.

It didn't matter when Mom and Dad died. It didn't matter that they died. It didn't matter that our heavily drunk father decided to beat our mother to her death to make her stop crying. It didn't matter that he died from alcohol overdose. It didn't matter that he'd tried to take you and me with him. All that mattered was that he failed. All that mattered was that neither you nor I died. We were still together, and that was all that mattered.

After Mom and Dad died, we continued living alone on the farm of Mineral Town. We started working seriously on it when I was sixteen, you seventeen. You'd take care of the crops; I'd take care of the animals. I think in a way, all the animals knew. Animalistic sense or whatever. They knew what we didn't want to know, what we buried deep within us, as deep as our parent's corpses.

You were nursing a head-wracking hangover from drinking far too much with Cliff the night before. I laid a warm towel on your forehead, gently dabbing away your cold sweat.

It was funny. You were always the one taking care of me, always saving me from being hit on from guys or always taking me home when I was drunk out of my skull. Today the roles had been reversed.

You shivered violently as the remnants of the smell of alcohol from your night before attacked you in a wave. I raised an eyebrow at you, amused and worried.

"Any reason you and Cliff decided to drink yourselves stupid last night?" I asked quietly, offering you my hand, which you hurriedly grabbed onto, releasing the blanket you'd been strangling with your fingers. You squeezed my hand tight.

Before you could reply, you were off to the toilet to heave out your poison of the previous night. I rubbed your back while you used the back of your hand to wipe your mouth. You abruptly tugged me down onto the toilet floor with you, wrapping your muscular arms suffocatingly around me. The putrid smell of alcohol mixed with vomit invaded my senses.

"Ugh, Jack. You smell so vile," I groaned. You wrapped your arms around me tighter.

"I love you."

Without hesitation, I replied as I always did.

"I love you too."

Never any hesitation.

I did some crazy things to try and bury it deeper within me.

It was eleven in the evening. I was seventeen. I was at the bar with Karen and we were celebrating her and Rick's break up, in the most Karen-appropriate way possible. Seven shots into the night, Karen was screaming a long string of expletives about Rick and his inadequacy in bed to anyone who would listen. I was laughingly trying to shush her, aware but not responsive to the presence of a tearful Rick in the corner. Kai and Gray were kindly trying to comfort Rick, but to no avail, as evidenced by his pathetic sobs and quiet wails of despair, and his gaze that remained transfixed on Karen the entire time.

Kai came up to us. "Karen, not to be rude, but bring it down a notch, won't you? Rick's right over there, for fuck's sake."

"Fuck Rick!" Karen screeched happily. Kai looked defeated, and turned to me.

"I don't think I'm going to get through this night this sober," he sighed. "Drink with me?"

I grinned. Kai was really a good-looking guy. His travels had done him well, rewarding him a tan nobody else in this town could obtain. That grubby six-year-old who had once stolen my drawing was now asking me to drink with him. That grubby six-year-old who had once stolen my drawing was now resting his hand on my hip suggestively.

"I'm sure as hell not dealing with Karen this sober," I laughed, downing a shot of vodka with him. Grabbing the next two, I held one more out for him. "Fuck love," I affirmed, holding up my shot glass to cheers with his. He laughed a long hearty laugh, before shouting out to the rest of the bar, "love fucking sucks!"

Kai and I fucked in a toilet stall. We fucked, simple as that. It wasn't making love, it wasn't the joining of our two bodies into one, or some other cliché crap. We didn't even physically sleep together. We fucked, in the most basic and literal sense of the word.

I left the moment it was over to find Karen, whom I could hear screaming all the way over from the toilet stall. Crying frantically, and being held down by Ann as she yelled to be allowed to talk to Rick, she was a complete mess. Gray had to hold Rick back with all his might as he scrambled to fall all over Karen. Kai and I walked out of the toilet, our deed being clear as the daylight that was quickly befalling us. My lipstick was smeared on both my and Kai's mouth. His purple bandana was haphazardly tied onto his head, at danger of slipping off at any moment. His jacket had gone missing, my dress rumpled and bra visibly torn. I smirked.

I would have wiped that damn smirk off my face if I'd known you were coming.

The door to the Inn swung open. You walked in, probably expecting to find me passed out, and anticipating having to carry me home, as you'd done countless times before. Your gaze swept the room slowly. A countdown.

Three.

You caught the oddly humorous sight of an utterly unamused Gray pinning the limp body of a sobbing Rick down with his fists.

Two.

Two dozen empty shot glasses littered the bar, each holding remnants of variously colored alcohol.

One.

Karen was struggling to break free of Ann's stronghold, one hand wildly flailing about, the other hand determinedly curled around a wine bottle. Rick was directly across the room from her, doing almost the same thing. Almost like a drunken forbidden love story.

Our eyes caught. Our breaths caught. Our hearts caught. Your hard gaze scanned me up and down.

Zero.

You knew.

"Fuck?"

It's kind of funny that you said that – in a twisted way. Fuck? Like a question of what we had done. Fuck? An expression of your inability to express your feelings in that instance. Fuck? The most vulgar word we knew to sum up your shock; my betrayal.

Jack. I did what I did that night because I didn't want to know what I knew. I wanted to forget. I thought maybe doing what I did might have erased you from my mind, if even for one short moment of release from your inescapable grasp on me.

It didn't work.

Back at home, I sat on my bed, staring determinedly at the floor, hoping it might split open and swallow me up. Swallow you and me up, and drop us off in a universe where only you and I existed.

You unwavering stare fastened on me from across the room. My heart was in danger of jumping out of my mouth. The smell of alcohol oozed out of my pores.

"You like him?"

"No."

"But you slept with him."

"I didn't sleep with him. I fucked him."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Claire. Don't give me that fucking bullshit." You ran your large hands through your chestnut brown hair, more frustrated than I'd ever seen you. Hurt overwhelming your eyes.

You looked straight into my soul. Our soul. We shared one soul, after all. I dared to glance up at you. Our eyes locked.

Electricity. Like a lightning bolt struck both of us, racing through every atom of our bodies, setting our senses numbingly alive.

Our eyes never broke apart.

"You know why."

You knew why. You'd known from the moment you saw me at the Inn that night. You were me and I was you; what I knew, you already knew.

All consuming.

Inescapable.

You tore your eyes away, dropping them towards the floor, nodding so slightly that I would have missed it, had I not been watching you like a mother hawk.

You knew.

"I wish I hadn't," I whispered to you, running my hands over my arms. I could still feel Kai's presence on me, in me. I felt revolted. Kai wasn't meant to be a part of me. A part of us.

You nodded again. Tension was the mood of that morning.

"Take a bath," you advised, your eyes flickering with undiluted disgust at how Kai had invaded me. Invaded us.

I nodded.

You drew me a bath in our bathtub as I silently undressed while your back was turned. You were about to walk out when I grabbed hold of your arm. You turned to me; pain poorly disguised in your hazel eyes.

"Bathe me," I requested – demanded. Your eyes widened for the second time that night. Your eyes were beautiful.

"You're drunk."

"I'm not."

You looked at me hard. I wasn't drunk. You didn't say anything more.

I sat down into the bath and let the warm water lap over my naked body. My naked soul. Cleansing me of Kai. Your hands gently ran water over my shoulders, my arms, my hands.

We were bordering perilously close on letting what we tried to suppress within us everyday spill out. You could feel my heartbeat. It was beating with yours.

Your large, calloused hands ran across my stomach, up to my neck, hesitantly down over my breasts.

My heart stopped. My fingernails dug into my thighs.

Lust filled our eyes.

We both knew.

Your hands travelled down, drawing my hands away from the death grip that my thighs were currently being held hostage in. You ran your hands over my thighs, over my hips.

In between my legs.

You gazed at me. I gazed back at you. Your eyes were beautiful. Two fingers slipped in, washing away every last molecule of Kai that remained in me.

You looked at me worriedly.

Danger. Jeopardy. Peril.

You undressed yourself slowly, letting yourself fall into the bath with me. My heart leapt out of my chest.

You caught it.

We were physically and spiritually one that night.

I died two months after. You died two months after. We died two months after.

You killed yourself. And by killing yourself, you killed me. You didn't kill me physically, of course. Never physically.

You left me a note. You didn't have to though. I never read it. I already knew what it said.

It said what we knew, what we couldn't know. It was that night that drove you over the edge. I know. We were brother and sister, but we were one. I guess that was the tragedy. Maybe if you hadn't been my brother, or I hadn't been your sister, things would have turned out differently. We might be running the farm together, with two cute little children who have your hazel eyes. Or we might have been two strangers who met in the city and who fell into a whirlwind romance that never ended. Anything could have been possible.

I don't really believe that though. I don't think it would have been the same if we hadn't been what we were to one another. You are me and I am you.

You killed yourself to get as far away from me as possible. You thought you wanted to escape my inescapable grasp on you.

Oh, Jack.

If it were that easy, I'd have killed myself years ago.

When your souls are intertwined like ours are; when your soul is one, there's no escaping. Not in life, not in death.

I carry you with me. Your blood pulses through my veins, just as mine lies cold in yours. You're me, and I'm you. When you killed yourself, you killed me. When I stayed alive, you stayed alive.

They always say that you can't choose the ones you love; I don't believe that. That may sound twisted, having heard my, our, story, but hear me out. I was in love with you from the day our soul was conjured. I couldn't help that. But I chose to love you too – with all my heart, with all my half heart. I've never regretted loving you. How can I regret loving the very blood the gushes through my veins? I carry your heart in mine. It beats in mine. And until I too turn to ashes and dust, I'll continue carrying it.

That's why I forgive you for killing yourself, and for killing me. I know you never really wanted to escape. I know you, Jack. And I know you'll forgive me for not killing myself the moment I found out you were dead. You'll forgive me for continuing living, and be glad I let us have this short time in this world.

After all, what's sixty years compared to an eternity?

Eternity.

That's where we'll meet again. That's where our soul lies, where we'll never be able to escape one another. Where we'll never have to escape one another. Please, don't think me foolish for believing in an afterlife. I don't believe in it. But I believe in wherever you are, because I know that you're somewhere in that eternity; waiting for me to be reunited with you. So, until then, just wait for me, Jack.

Until then, I carry your heart.

I carry it in my heart.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harvest Moon, Wasteland by Francesca Lia Block, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte or the phrase "I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)" by e.e cummings

Author's Note: (I drew a lot of inspiration from the aforementioned works) This is my very first time writing about something as mature and serious as incest, so please be kind! Also, please know that I do not practice or encourage incest in any way whatsoever. I hope you enjoy and will leave me some comments as well!