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𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠: the serpentine - tame impala
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Since the moment of her birth, Marianna had been marked by a kind of selflessness that others often praised yet never fully understood. From the earliest days, she had been the one who saw love where others saw emptiness, who sought to fill the hollow spaces in people's hearts with the remnants of her own. She gave without thought to the cost, pouring herself into others, never imagining that one day she might run dry. But every woman has her limits, and Marianna was no exception.
She had never expected that love, the very force that had driven her for so long, could become a source of exhaustion. But life has a way of wearing down even the strongest souls, and as she stood there, her back pressed against the cold, unforgiving cement wall of the hospital, she realized just how much had been taken from her. The years had not been kind, and now, as she waited in the shadows, a strange sense of nervousness gnawed at her—an unfamiliar and unsettling sensation that she hadn't felt in years. And it made her feel weary.
The whispers in her mind, the spirits that had always been her silent companions, were unusually quiet tonight, as if they too were holding their breath, waiting for what was to come. Marianna had faced danger, betrayal, and death itself without flinching, but the thought of standing before Tommy Shelby again, after everything that had happened, after her own supposed death, filled her with a childlike trepidation. It was as if she were a girl once more, caught in the act of stealing a stale loaf of bread, fearing the consequences of being discovered.
The sudden creak of a door opening broke the silence, followed by the soft, hesitant footsteps of Michael. Marianna straightened her back instinctively, smoothing down her fiery curls, her sharp eyes locking onto the boy with a gaze that was as distant as it was piercing.
"He's awake." Michael said, though his voice was far away, as if he were speaking from the other side of a deep chasm. Whatever had passed between him and Tommy in that room was clearly gnawing at him, eating away at the edges of his thoughts.
"Is he going to be alright?" Marianna's question was blunt, her concern almost alien, even to her. It was as if she were speaking someone else's words, someone softer. The woman she had become was not one to show such vulnerability, but here she was, asking a question that felt foreign on her tongue.
Michael looked at her, and in that gaze was an unarticulatde sympathy. He knew what she was really asking. Was she going to be alright? Was Tommy still the man she remembered, or had the morphineand the ghosts of his sins finally driven him into madness? Was he even capable of recognizing her, of seeing her as something other than a specter from the grave?
