𝐂𝐎𝐃𝐄𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌

𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄

Russell didn't know how he was going to be able to break this to his older brother.

He was accepting of monsters, after Heather and Anna...he even went along with Russell to hunt some of the creatures they read about. 

But knowing something exists and seeing it are two very, very different things. And Russell is very much a part of the world they thought was so fucked up.

Weighing the situation in his mind, it's only made Russell think there has to be a good and a bad to everything. A spectrum. Like politics. Some politicians genuinely want to do good, to make the world better. Some of them...Well.

"Don't forget to vote in November," Katherine chirps at him, passing behind him in the kitchen.

Russell snorts, then looks back to the eggs in the pan before him. 

It's been just over a week since Mitch left, almost three since they've been here, and Russell can't remember a time his life had changed so drastically, even after Heather and Anna. 

Someone can slip into his mind...hear his thoughts, speak back to him...all without saying a word, without exuding any kind of force. It was challenging to try to push words and thoughts to Katherine, but now...now it was easy as breathing. In the mornings, if he was up before Katherine, he just liked to follow her stream of consciousness. Or unconsciousness, rather. Where her dreams would take her, what it felt like as she rose to awareness. It wasn't all good. 

Most nights, still, she had horrible dreams. Those take their toll on her in very physical ways. She's stopped pulling away from him, but her eyes have that dull, tried look, and light purple shadows live underneath them. Not having the pills as a sleeping aid proves to be troublesome...

Last night, she was sleepwalking. She made it all the way down the stairs before Russell woke up to the distinct feeling of panic. When he made it downstairs, she was holding a butcher knife and waiting around the corner for him. 

The whole house woke up at the sound of her shriek of bloody murder. 

What she was dreaming, Russell didn't even know. But it was bad enough that she completely shut him out this morning. The warm, gentle hum he'd grown so used to feeling in his mind was totally quiet this morning.

And he didn't know how to tell her how much it hurt.

She sips at her coffee at the island, eyes glued to the newspaper there, giving away no indication that she's eavesdropping on his inner thoughts.

"Are you gonna be voting?" Russell asks by way of distraction.

"That would kind of go against my evading the government," Katherine blandly hums into her mug. "I've been very careful to avoid them, you know."

"How come?"

She offers a lame shrug of her shoulder. "Because it's easier to do my job well under the radar. Make them forget I exist, especially after all this bullshit of the past year."

Russell surveys her quietly, verbally and mentally. He sees scenes of a fiery helicopter crash, of her bloody living room. Things he has questions about, and he doesn't know if he'll ever get to ask.

"You don't have to ask me permission to tell your brother," Katherine quietly says. She turns the page she was looking at. "It's your life, too."

Russell turns to the stove, cuts the heat, and moves the pan to another burner. "There's this feeling I have...makes me tense up. Louise said it's an instinct to protect you. Protect us." He turns to look at Katherine, crossing his arms as he leans against the counter. "Part of me knows Pat isn't a threat...but the other part..."