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[ season three, episode four ]
Sleeping was a necessity almost as much as it was a burden.
In the hollow darkness of a resting mind, memories resurfaced ─ good ones, bad ones, fictional ones based on loose events. Everything that bloomed in the face of slumber had meaning to it. Marley's dreams were often melancholy, a never ending cycle of remembrance. She saw the faces of the ones she lost, haunting her, taunting her with the guilt she had never been able to eradicate. It was inescapable.
That night, Marley dreamt of Bonnie. Dreaming was a soft way to put it. Her mind was plagued with the horror of her best friend's demise, and her brain churned through the scene with gut-wrenching accuracy.
Her hand slipped. Even now, that image was clear as day ─ the way her fingers absconded from Bonnie's, an accidental yet fatal mistake she made as the decimated ruins of Atlanta city smoked all around them.
God, her hand slipped.
Marley bolted upright in the top-bunk, wiping the sweat beading along her hairline. Saliva rushed to her mouth, and her chest felt like it was burning, thick flames licking her ribcage. Perhaps that was Bonnie's spirit coming back for retribution, burdening the blonde with blooming buds of pain. Forcing her to remember what she did on that fateful night. But it didn't matter either way. The guilt of Bonnie's death had been slowly gnawing away at Marley's innards since the very beginning of the apocalypse, and would eventually lead up to the penultimate fate where she was left a hollow shell of her past existence.
Her hand slipped.
She could have saved her. Bonnie . . . her last moments were spent in agony as the walkers did that . . . and the blood. So much blood. Marley's stomach clenched.
As she threw her legs over the bunk, she noticed a figure looming behind the drawn curtain of her cell block. The silhouette rippled in the rivulets of dewy light that filtered in through the window outside, slivers of daybreak seeping beneath the curtain.
A new day. Another chance at survival. More resurfacing memories coming back to haunt her.
Marley pushed her hair out of her face and called out, "Beth?" She recognised the shadow ─ the outline of the messy ponytail, the slightly hunched stature. "You can come in. I'm decent."
Slender fingers drew the curtain back. Light blazed into the cell, spilling across the cobblestone floors and splashing up the walls. Marley lifted an arm to cover her scorched eyes, grimacing.
