Brother
Kevin and Maddyās relationship with each other is better than their doubles. They harbour a little less resentment towards each other, and Jocelin had been enough to bridge the final gap between them more often than not.
They hadnāt been close as children. Their age gap was wide enough that they simply didnāt have anything in common. Sheād still sit and listen to his babbling stores though, and let him help her in the garden. They loved each other, but they werenāt close really.
When sheās in her teens, theyāre a bit closer by simple fact that sheās doing more around the house. Sheās the one making sure that Kevin never sees too much of their mothers delusions, and sheās the one that encourages his cassette recordings to prepare for radio.
When sheās 19, things change. Their mother vanishes, and her brother is too young to be left alone. So she drops out of her botany degree, and takes a job to pay the bills, and buy them food. Their relationship isnāt bad per se, but thereās just enough resentment in it that itās not always easy. Usually, she can direct it where it needs to go: towards their mother and the fact that she left. He gets his internship, and she smiles at him because itās what heās been wanting for a decade. They make their patterns, and life readjusts.
She has Jocelin, and it bridges the last bit of separation between them. Kevin adores them: when she needs some time to sleep, heās more than willing to take them for a few hours, and eventually the people at the radio station stop looking oddly at him for it. Jocelin rarely cries, and he can put curtsins on the window so they doesnāt get exposed to the sun.
Itās not always easy with Jocelinās allergy. But they make do. Kevin becomes the Voice, and she considers going back to school, but then Jocelin cries, or she has to spend a day rubbing anti-irritant creams into their skin because they got exposed to too much sun.
StrexCorp comes, and itās enough for her to worry about Kevin. Heās an important figure in their town, and she knows heāll never accept them buying out the station. He complains about them when sheās making dinner and heās holding Jocelin- they like their uncleās tattoos, and can happily spend ages following the twisting yellow tentacles with their eyes, and tracing the path with their hands, laughing everytime it crosses with another one.
They buy out where sheās working, and she doesnāt make trouble. Thereās already enough of that. So she puts on a smile, and increases her productivity when sheās at work, coming in half an hour early, and leaving half an hour late. Itās enough for the Strex managers to be happy, but not so much that it disrupts life too much.
They take the station, and Maddy will never forget how scared her baby brother sounded when he took them to the weather, or the way that everything seemed to stop when the woman-Lauren Mallard, came back on instead.
Days later, she will open her door, and Kevin, a jumbled mess of blood and bruises will be there in the setting sun. His third eye sewn shut, and his eyes gone black. (She cries that night for what her town has become, and what theyāve done to Kevin. (And finally, she will think the prophecy all those years ago a tragedy, and understand her motherās desperate madness).
Theyāre not as close after that. Strex values efficiency above all else, and they demand that their radio host exemplifies that. So she sees him less, and when she does, heās that little bit more loyal, that little bit less like the person she knew.
The sun stops setting after that, replaced by some terrible light in the sky that they call the Smiling God. It still burns Jocelin, and it becomes a question of how to get her child to school each day. Until one day, they take them away to be āfixedā. Sheās terrified that theyāll fix Jocelin like that fixed Kevin or the rest of the town. But three days later, her child is brought back home, and sheās told that now they can truly live in the glory of the Smiling God. They take down the curtains sheās put up, and hold Jocelin up to the sky. The allergy is gone, and part of her is grateful. They lived in a desert, and now the sun never sets. Part of her hated that they just saw Jocelin as an inefficient problem that had to be fixed.
The next time Kevin is left at her door, his mouth had been carved into a smile, and she hates it. She hates the fact that this has become her life, and her brotherās. She cleans away the blood, and disinfects the wound, and she holds him in her arms until he falls asleep.
He still looks so young, and she knows logically, that he isnāt the same person she took care of when their mother vanished, or gave stuffed animals to. Heās older, and corrupted, and so conditioned by Strex that heās happy about all of it.
It breaks her heart more days than not.
