Violent Delights¹︎ | D.Dixon

3.04 ➸︎

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CHAPTER FOUR
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One Month Later.

LIFE CAN BE CHANGED FOREVER by one decision, one choice, one word. Everything has a cause and effect, and the world that came after the walkers began to roam was no different than before. Not in that sense, anyhow. Leona's life was just as it was before. Cause, then effect.

Running a fingertip over the pale cream wallpaper, Leona fought back tears over the sensation. Smooth—nearly impossibly so. Life had been nothing but fabric and brick and porous wood for so long that something smooth was like climbing out of a pool and jumping directly into the hot tub. There was nothing as nice as one of the rooms within Sanctuary. The stalls had been her home for weeks, now, with walls made of bedsheets without an ounce of real privacy. But even the stalls were better than living on the road, especially with a child on the way.

The things she had done to earn her room, her place at Negan's 'round table', would give a normal person nightmares, and yet she did them for the child pressing on her bladder without missing a wink of sleep.

After peeing in her own toilet for the very first time since the world collapsed, Leona stepped back into the room. She had a small line of countertop to her left, a microwave sitting on it, as well as a desktop fan, both plugged into the outlet just behind them. A sink was a few feet away, at the other end of the small kitchenette. To her right, the headboard flush against the wall shared with her bathroom was a full-sized bed. The mattress was bare, a set of sheets and a comforter folded at the end beside two pillows with matching pillowcases. Then, her eyes caught on what laid before her, just beneath the window casting in the afternoon rays.

A tear slipped down Leona's cheek as she stepped forward, brushing a hand over the smooth seat, and smiled to herself.

It was a rocking chair.

Sitting down on the wooden seat, Leona's eyes fluttered shut. Both sock-clad feet on the ground, her toes pushed her back, then lowered her forward, then again, and again, and again...

Hands held the ends of the armrests, nails running over the small divots in the wood.

There were a limited number of things Leona remembered about her own mother—the sting of her words, the pale blue of her eyes, the burn scars littered around her fingers, palms, wrists, from spending a lifetime in a farmhouse kitchen—but the sound of the rocking chair in their living room creaking as her mother rocked back and forth was carved into her memory. She would hum a melody, something wordless and unwritten and out of tune. It would fill the silence as she played on the carpet at her feet, a pleading look toward her for a hug, a smile, a blink of acknowledgment.

Leona was happy the floor beneath her feet was wooden. Even as she hummed that same melody, the beat even with the rocking of that chair, she knew she would give anything to be nothing like her own mother. Even as her own face echoed her mother's look, she made a silent promise that her child would never need to beg for their mother's love. She would give her child the childhood she never had.

A knock sounded at her door. Three sharp knocks, and she smiled. He used the same pattern before waltzing into the infirmary for his shift. Standing from the chair with a grunt of effort, Leona waddled toward the door, opening it with a grin as she found Sage standing on the other side.