ichor - DM

𝟎𝟑. 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝

"Why'd you call?"

Reva had barely stepped into the apartment, not even closed the door, when she heard her brother's voice from the kitchen.

She was panting, gripping the door for support.

"I... I was..."

Why had she called?

Her brother turned around, a saucepan in one hand and a spatula in another. He cocked an eyebrow at her. Though it was nearly two in the morning, he was cooking dinner for the both of them. She often came home late at night, and he was a teenager who refused to establish healthy sleeping habits.

"Did you run here?"

"Err... yes, I thought it would be wise to get into the practice of... cardio sooner rather than later," she responded, clearing her throat as she gently shut the door behind her.

Her eyes scanned the apartment, from the flickering yellow lights hanging from the low ceiling, to the peeling fruit medley wallpaper in the cramped kitchen, to the mismatched futon and armchairs in the living room, and to the small stack of eviction notices gathering in the half open drawer of the coffee table. She shivered slightly despite the warmth emitting from the stove. He couldn't have... been in here, could he have? Surely something in the apartment would be off, or misplaced, something to indicate that that beast had broken into their home.

A chill ran down her spine. How else would he have known all of those things? If he hadn't broken into her home, stalked her at both places of work, perhaps even stalked her brother at school or with his friends? She could feel herself breaking into a sweat once more, heart and mind racing in tandem as she tried to rationalize how or why any of this could be happening — why the very monster who had attacked her so long ago would give her the phantom of peace for nine years only to return with threats and demands, how she could have allowed herself to believe she would be safe simply because she wanted to be.

Reva slowly looked up at Roshan.

He was looking back expectantly, as though he had said something and was waiting on a response.

"We need to move," she blurted. She said it before her mind thought it, but it quickly became the sanest thought she had ever had.

Roshan just laughed, a bit of sauce dripping off the spatula he was still holding.

"What? Yeah, okay," he scoffed, turning around to continue cooking whatever was before him.

"Start packing tonight."

"Sure. And where are we moving?"

"Australia. Or the States." Anywhere that would put an ocean between the two of them and that beast.

"Right. And how are we paying for that?"

Reva clamped her lips together. Shit.

"What happened this time, anyways?" he continued, opening a cabinet above him to pull out a couple spices. "Another patient threw up on you? Or, worse, a drunk witch?"

She stalled, pulling her handbag off her shoulder while she kicked her heels off. The backs of her ankles were sore from running in those contraptions, and she could feel the beginning of a blister on one of them.

"Something like that, yeah."

They couldn't move. Evidently, relocating across the globe required more funds than they had in the coin jar they kept behind all the cleaning supplies under their bathroom sink. Running away was not exactly an option either — Roshan only had about four months of his thirteenth year remaining, and if she knew her obstinate little brother at all, she knew he would find a way to run back. Damn him and his insistence on graduating. Not to mention, they did not exactly have a summer home to escape to.