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[ season three, episode five ]
Grief was not temporary.
Marley came to that crushing realisation fairly soon after Lori's death. She woke from a brief nap with a heavy feeling in her chest, like someone was pressing their boot against her ribs, pushing her deeper and deeper into the mattress. The curtain was half-drawn open, and the afternoon sun was streaming into the cell block, pooling on the ground. Happy. Positive. Golden.
It was strange; Marley expected the clouds to be dark and dense. But they weren't. The afternoon dawned bright and sunny, as if nothing had happened, and her grief was inconsequential. She found she wanted it to be gloomy. She wanted the world to feel what she was feeling. She wanted it to mirror her sadness. It was supposed to. Why wasn't the sky crying? Where were the dark clouds, shadowing the earth in misery?
Why didn't it care?
Marley spent a long time gazing into the distance, curled up against the mattress. She missed Lori already, her soft voice and sweet disposition and motherly tenderness. But it wasn't just Lori she was thinking about today ─ grieving a mother brought memories of her own back, and she realised just how much she wished Monica Whitman was still alive.
If anything, it made her sympathise greatly with Carl. He had grown up cocooned in the curvature of his mother's wings, and now it had been stripped away, allowing room for coldness and unwanted independence. Marley knew that feeling all to well. And she knew how difficult it was to contend with, alongside a million other things to worry about.
Like the baby.
Marley could hear it crying from her cell. Beth was handling the baby in the cafeteria, taking over the duties of care, with help from Hershel and the others. Marley was absolutely positive Carol would've been more than inclined to help, but she died in the tombs during the chaos that morning. T-Dog, too. Glenn told Marley about their deaths, and she hadn't really felt anything. She had been numb. But now, she felt it all. It was suffocating, the grief pinning her in a chokehold. Carol had been an incredibly good woman who always looked out for the Whitman sisters despite her own troubles, and T-Dog had been the most selfless person Marley ever met. He had a heart of gold. He put people's well-being above his own, habitually. They were both good, and now they were both dead because of one fuck up.
One lapse in their judgement.
The prisoner they thought was dead turned out to be a loose canon, and very much alive. Andrew. He set the alarms off on purpose, as well as opening the gates to allow the walkers free reign of their home. It was safe to say, however, he wasn't alive anymore.
